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THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 






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I 







































The 

Damnation of Theron Ware 


BY 

HAROLD FREDERIC 



NEW YORK 

DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
i9iS 



V 


COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY 
STONE AND KIMBALL 


DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
Successors 


“b \ © V \ x> 

*'V. r, -■evs 






PART I 


CHAPTER I 

No such throng had ever before been seen in 
the building during all its eight years of exist- 
ence. People were wedged together most un- 
comfortably upon the seats; they stood packed 
in the aisles and overflowed the galleries ; at the 
back, in the shadows underneath these galleries, 
they formed broad, dense masses about the doors, 
through which it would be hopeless to attempt a 
passage. 

The light, given out from numerous tin-lined 
circles of flaring gas-jets arranged on the ceiling, 
fell full upon a thousand uplifted faces, — some 
framed in bonnets or juvenile curls, others bearded 
or crowned with shining baldness, — but all alike 
under the spell of a dominant emotion which held 
features in abstracted suspense and focussed every 
eye upon a common objective point. 

The excitement of expectancy reigned upon 
each row of countenances, was visible in every 
attitude, — nay, seemed a part of the close, over- 
heated atmosphere itself. 

5 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


An observer, looking over these compact lines 
of faces and noting the uniform concentration of 
eagerness they exhibited, might have guessed that 
they were watching for either the jury’s verdict in 
some peculiarly absorbing criminal trial, or the an- 
nouncement of the lucky numbers in a great lottery. 
These two expressions seemed to alternate, and 
even to mingle vaguely, upon the upturned linea- 
ments of the waiting throng, — the hope of some 
unnamed stroke of fortune and the dread of some 
adverse decree. 

But a glance forward at the object of this uni- 
versal gaze would have sufficed to shatter both 
hypotheses. Here was neither a court of justice 
nor a tombola. It was instead the closing session 
of the annual Nedahma Conference of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church, and the Bishop was about 
to read out the list of ministerial appointments for 
the coming year. This list was evidently written 
in a hand strange to him, and the slow, near- 
sighted old gentleman, having at last sufficiently 
rubbed the glasses of his spectacles, and then 
adjusted them over his nose with annoying delib- 
eration, was now silently rehearsing his task to 
himself, — the while the clergymen round about 
ground their teeth and restlessly shuffled their 
feet in impatience. 

Upon a closer inspection of the assemblage, 
there were a great many of these clergymen. A 
dozen or more dignified, and for the most part 
6 _ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


elderly, brethren sat grouped about the Bishop 
in the pulpit. As many others, not quite so 
staid in mien, and indeed with here and there 
almost a suggestion of frivolity in their postures, 
were seated on the steps leading down from 
this platform. A score of their fellows sat facing 
the audience, on chairs tightly wedged into the 
space railed off round the pulpit ; and then 
came five or six rows of pews, stretching across 
the whole breadth of the church, and almost 
solidly filled with preachers of the Word. 

There were very old men among these, — bent 
and decrepit veterans who had known Lorenzo 
Dow, and had been ordained by elders who 
remembered Francis Asbury and even Whitefield. 
They sat now in front places, leaning forward with 
trembling and misshapen hands behind their hairy 
ears, waiting to hear their names read out on the 
superannuated list, it might be for the last time. 

The sight of these venerable Fathers in Israel 
was good to the eyes, conjuring up, as it did, pic- 
tures of a time when a plain and homely people 
had been served by a fervent and devoted clergy, 
— by preachers who lacked in learning and polish, 
no doubt, but who gave their lives without dream 
of earthly reward to poverty and to the danger and 
wearing toil of itinerant missions through the rude 
frontier settlements. These pictures had for their 
primitive accessories log-huts, rough household im- 
plements, coarse clothes, and patched old saddles 
7 , 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


which told of weary years of journeying ; but to 
even the least sympathetic vision there shone 
upon them the glorified light of the Cross and 
Crown. Reverend survivors of the heroic times, 
their very presence there — sitting meekly at the 
altar-rail to hear again the published record of 
their uselessness and of their dependence upon 
church charity — was in the nature of a bene- 
diction. 

The large majority of those surrounding these 
patriarchs were middle-aged men, generally of a 
robust type, with burly shoulders, and bushing 
beards framing shaven upper lips, and who looked 
for the most part like honest and prosperous 
farmers attired in their Sunday clothes. As ex- 
ceptions to this rule, there were scattered stray 
specimens of a more urban class, worthies with 
neatly trimmed whiskers, white neckcloths, and 
even indications of hair-oil, — all eloquent of citi- 
fied charges ; and now and again the eye singled 
out a striking and scholarly face, at once strong 
and simple, and instinctively referred it to the 
faculty of one of the several theological semi- 
naries belonging to the Conference. 

The effect of these faces as a whole was toward 
goodness, candor, and imperturbable self-compla- 
cency rather than learning or mental astuteness ; 
and curiously enough it wore its pleasantest aspect 
on the countenances of the older men. The im- 
press of zeal and moral worth seemed to dimin- 
8 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ish by regular gradations as one passed to younger 
faces ; and among the very beginners, who had been 
ordained only within the past day or two, this de- 
cline was peculiarly marked. It was almost a 
relief to note the relative smallness of their num- 
ber, so plainly was it to be seen that they were not 
the men their forbears had been. 

And if those aged, worn-out preachers facing 
the pulpit had gazed instead backward over the 
congregation, it may be that here too their old 
eyes would have detected a difference, — what at 
least they would have deemed a decline. 

But nothing was further from the minds of the 
members of the First M. E. church of Tecumseh 
than the suggestion that they were not an improve- 
ment on those who had gone before them. They 
were undoubtedly the smartest and most important 
congregation within the limits of the Nedahma 
Conference, and this new church edifice of theirs 
represented alike a scale of outlay and a standard 
of progressive taste in devotional architecture 
unique in the Methodism of that whole section of 
the State. They had a right to be proud of them- 
selves, too. They belonged to the substantial 
order of the community, with perhaps not so 
many very rich men as the Presbyterians had, 
but on the other hand with far fewer extremely 
poor folk than the Baptists were encumbered with. 
The pews in the first four rows of their church 
rented for one hundred dollars apiece, — quite up 
9 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


to the Presbyterian highwater mark, — and they 
now had almost abolished free pews altogether. 
The oyster suppers given by their Ladies’ Aid 
Society in the basement of the church during 
the winter had established rank among the fash- 
ionable events in Tecumseh’s social calendar. 

A comprehensive and satisfied perception of 
these advantages was uppermost in the minds of 
this local audience, as they waited for the Bishop 
to begin his reading. They had entertained this 
Bishop and his Presiding Elders, and the rank 
and file of common preachers, in a style which 
could not have been remotely approached by any 
other congregation in the Conference. Where 
else, one would like to know, could the Bishop 
have been domiciled in a Methodist house where 
he might have a sitting-room all to himself, with 
his bedroom leading out of it? Every clergy- 
man present had been provided for in a private 
residence, — even down to the Licensed Exhorters, 
who were not really ministers at all when you came 
to think of it, and who might well thank their stars 
that the Conference had assembled among such 
open-handed people. There existed a dim feeling 
that these Licensed Exhorters — an uncouth crew, 
with country store-keepers and lumbermen and even 
a horse-doctor among their number — had taken 
rather too much for granted, and were not exhibit- 
ing quite the proper degree of gratitude over their 
reception. 

10 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


But a more important issue hung now imminent 
in the balance, — was Tecumseh to be fairly and 
honorably rewarded for her hospitality by being 
given the pastor of her choice? 

All were agreed — at least among those who 
paid pew-rents — upon the great importance of 
a change in the pulpit of the First M. E. Church. 
A change in persons must of course take place, for 
their present pastor had exhausted the three-year 
maximum of the itinerant system, but there was 
needed much more than that. For a handsome 
and expensive church building like this, and 
with such a modern and go-ahead congregation, it 
was simply a vital necessity to secure an attrac- 
tive and fashionable preacher. They had held 
their own against the Presbyterians these past 
few years only by the most strenuous efforts, and 
under the depressing disadvantage of a min- 
ister who preached dreary out-of-date sermons, 
and who lacked even the most rudimentary sense 
of social distinctions. The Presbyterians had 
captured the new cashier of the Adams County 
Bank, who had always gone to the Methodist 
Church in the town he came from, but now was 
lost solely because of this tiresome old fossil of 
theirs ; and there were numerous other instances 
of the same sort, scarcely less grievous. That 
this state of things must be altered was clear. 

The unusually large local attendance upon the 
sessions of the Conference had given some of the 


1 1 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


more guileless of visiting brethren a high notion of 
Tecumseh’s piety; and perhaps even the most 
sophisticated stranger never quite realized how 
strictly it was to be explained by the anxiety to 
pick out a suitable champion for the fierce Presby- 
terian competition. Big gatherings assembled 
evening after evening to hear the sermons of those 
selected to preach, and the church had been 
almost impossibly crowded at each of the three 
Sunday services. Opinions had naturally differed 
a good deal during the earlier stages of this 
scrutiny, but after last night’s sermon there could 
be but one feeling. The man for Tecumseh was 
the Reverend Theron Ware. 

The choice was an admirable one, from points 
of view much more exalted than those of the local 
congregation. 

You could see Mr. Ware sitting there at the end 
of the row inside the altar- rail, — the tall, slender 
young man with the broad white brow, thoughtful 
eyes, and features moulded into that regularity of 
strength which used to characterize the American 
Senatorial type in those far-away days of clean- 
shaven faces and moderate incomes before the 
War. The bright-faced, comely, and vivacious 
young woman in the second side pew was his wife 
— and Tecumseh noted with approbation that she 
knew how to dress. There were really no two 
better or worthier people in the building than this 
young couple, who sat waiting along with the rest 


12 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


to hear their fate. But unhappily they had come 
to know of the effort being made to bring them to 
Tecumseh ; and their simple pride in the triumph 
of the husband’s fine sermon had become swal- 
lowed up in a terribly anxious conflict of hope and 
fear. Neither of them could maintain a satisfac- 
tory show of composure as the decisive moment 
approached. The vision of translation from pov- 
erty and obscurity to such a splendid post as this, 
• — truly it was too dazzling for tranquil nerves. 

The tedious Bishop had at last begun to call his 
roll of names, and the good people of Tecumseh 
mentally ticked them off, one by one, as the list 
expanded. They felt that it was like this Bishop 
— an unimportant and commonplace figure in 
Methodism, not to be mentioned in the same 
breath with Simpson and Janes and Kingsley — 
that he should begin with the backwoods counties, 
and thrust all these remote and pitifully rustic 
stations ahead of their own metropolitan charge. 
To these they listened but listlessly, — indifferent 
alike to the joy and to the dismay which he was 
scattering among the divines before him. 

The announcements were being doled out with 
stumbling hesitation. After each one a little half- 
rustling movement through the crowded rows of 
clergymen passed mute judgment upon the cruel 
blow this brother had received, the reward justly 
given to this other, the favoritism by which a third 
had profited. The Presiding Elders, whose work 
U 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

all this was, stared with gloomy and impersonal 
abstraction down upon the rows of blackcoated 
humanity spread before them. The ministers 
returned this fixed and perfunctory gaze with pale, 
set faces, only feebly masking the emotions which 
each new name stirred somewhere among them. 
The Bishop droned on laboriously, mispronoun- 
cing words and repeating himself as if he were 
reading a catalogue of unfamiliar seeds. 

“ First church of Tecumseh — Brother Abram 
G. Tisdale ! ” 

There was no doubt about it ! These were 
actually the words that had been uttered. After 
all this outlay, all this lavish hospitality, all this 
sacrifice of time and patience in sitting through 
those sermons, to draw from the grab-bag nothing 
better than — a Tisdale ! 

A hum of outraged astonishment — half groan, 
half wrathful snort — bounded along from pew to 
pew throughout the body of the church. An echo 
of it reached the Bishop, and so confused him that 
he haltingly repeated the obnoxious line. Every 
local eye turned as by intuition to where the 
calamitous Tisdale sat, and fastened malignantly 
upon him. 

Could anything be worse? This Brother Tis- 
dale was past fifty, — a spindling, rickety, gaunt old 
man, with a long horse- like head and vacantly 
solemn face, who kept one or the other of his 
hands continually fumbling his bony jaw. He had 
14 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


been withdrawn from routine service for a number 
of years, doing a little insurance canvassing on his 
own account, and also travelling for the Book Con- 
cern. Now that he wished to return to parochial 
work, the richest prize in the whole list, Tecum- 
seh, was given to him, — to him who had never 
been asked to preach at a conference, and whose 
archaic nasal singing of “ Greenland’s Icy Moun- 
tains” had made even the Licensed Exhorters 
grin ! It was too intolerably dreadful to think of ! 

An embittered whisper to the effect that Tisdale 
was the Bishop’s cousin ran round from pew to 
pew. This did not happen to be true, but indig- 
nant Tecumseh gave it entire credit. The throngs 
about the doors dwindled as by magic, and the 
aisles cleared. Local interest was dead; and 
even some of the pewholders rose and made their 
way out. One of these murmured audibly to his 
neighbors as he departed that his pew could be 
had now for sixty dollars. 

So it happened that when, a little later on, the 
appointment of Theron Ware to Octavius was read 
out, none of the people of Tecumseh either noted 
or cared. They had been deeply interested in 
him so long as it seemed likely that he was to 
come to them, — before their clearly expressed 
desire for him had been so monstrously ignored. 
But now what became of him was no earthly con- 
cern of theirs. 

After the Doxology had been sung and the Con- 

- 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ference formally declared ended, the Wares would 
fain have escaped from the flood of handshakings 
and boisterous farewells which spread over the 
front part of the church. But the clergymen were 
unusually insistent upon demonstrations of cor- 
diality among themselves, — the more, perhaps, be- 
cause it was evident that the friendliness of their 
local hosts had suddenly evaporated ; and, of all 
men in the world, the priest incumbent of the 
Octavius pulpit now bore down upon them with 
noisy effusiveness, and defied evasion. 

“ Brother Ware — we have never been inter- 
duced — but let me clasp your hand ! And — 
Sister Ware, I presume — yours too ! ” 

He was a portly man, who held his head back 
so that his face seemed all jowl and mouth and 
sandy chin-whisker. He smiled broadly upon 
them with half-closed eyes, and shook hands 
again. 

“ I said to ’em,” he went on with loud pretence 
of heartiness, “ the minute I heerd your name 
called out for our dear Octavius, * I must go over 
an’ interduce myself.’ It will be a heavy cross to 
part with those dear people, Brother Ware, but if 
anything could wean me to the notion, so to speak, 
it would be the knowledge that you are to take 
up my labors in their midst. Perhaps — ah — per- 
haps they are jest a trifle close in money matters, 
but they come out strong on revivals. They’ll 
need a good deal o’ stirrin’ up about parsonage 
16 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


expenses, but, oh ! such seasons of grace as we ’ve 
experienced there together ! ” He shook his 
head, and closed his eyes altogether, as if trans- 
ported by his memories. 

Brother Ware smiled faintly in decorous re- 
sponse, and bowed in silence ; but his wife resented 
the unctuous beaming of content on the other’s 
wide countenance, and could not restrain her 
tongue. 

“ You seem to bear up tolerably well under this 
heavy cross, as you call it,” she said sharply. 

“ The will o’ the Lord, Sister Ware, — the will 
o* the Lord ! ” he responded, disposed for the 
instant to put on his pompous manner with her, 
and then deciding to smile again as he moved 
off. The circumstance that he was to get an 
additional three hundred dollars yearly in his new 
place was not mentioned between them. 

By a mutual impulse the young couple, when 
they had at last gained the cool open air, crossed 
the street to the side where over-hanging trees 
shaded the infrequent lamps, and they might be 
comparatively alone. The wife had taken her 
husband’s arm, and pressed closely upon it as they 
walked. For a time no word passed, but finally 
he said, in a grave voice, — 

“ It is hard upon you, poor girl.” 

Then she stopped short, buried her face against 
his shoulder, and fell to sobbing. 

He strove with gentle, whispered remonstrance 

2 I 7 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


to win her from this mood, and after a few mo- 
ments she lifted her head and they resumed their 
walk, she wiping her eyes as they went. 

“ I could n’t keep it in a minute longer ! ” she 
said, catching her breath between phrases. “ Oh, 
why do they behave so badly to us, Theron? ” 

He smiled down momentarily upon her as they 
moved along, and patted her hand. 

“ Somebody must have the poor places, Alice,” 
he said consolingly. “ I am a young man yet, 
remember. VVe must take our turn, and be 
patient. For ‘ we know that all things work to- 
gether for good.’ ” 

“ And your sermon was so head-and-shoulders 
above all the others ! ” she went on breathlessly. 
" Everybody said so ! And Mrs. Parshall heard it 
so direct that you were to be sent here, and I know 
she told everybody how much I was lotting on it 
* — I wish we could go right off to-night without 
going to her house — I shall be ashamed to look 
her in the face — and of course she knows we ’re 
poked off to that miserable Octavius. — Why, 
Theron, they tell me it ’s a worse place even than 
we ’ve got now ! ” 

“ Oh, not at all,” he put in reassuringly. “ It 
has grown to be a large town — oh, quite twice 
the size of Tyre. It ’s a great Irish place, I ’ve 
heard. Our own church seems to be a good deal 
run down there. We must build it up again ; and 
the salary is better — a little.” 

18 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


But he too was depressed, and they walked on 
toward their temporary lodging in a silence full of 
mutual grief. It was not until they had come 
within sight of this goal that he prefaced by a little 
sigh of resignation these further words, — 

“ Come, let us make the best of it, my girl l 
After all, we are in the hands of the Lord.” 

“ Oh, don’t, Theron ! ” she said hastily. “ Don’t 
talk to me about the Lord to-night ; I can’t 
bear itl” 


CHAPTER II 


“ Theron ! Come out here ! This is the fun- 
niest thing we have heard yet ! ” 

Mrs. Ware stood on the platform of her new 
kitchen stoop. The bright flood of May-morning 
sunshine completely enveloped her girlish form, 
clad in a simple, fresh- starched calico gown, and 
shone in golden patches upon her light-brown 
nair. She had a smile on her face, as she looked 
down at the milk boy standing on the bottom step, 
— a smile of a doubtful sort, stormily mirthful. 

“ Come out a minute, Theron ! ” she called 
again ; and in obedience to the summons the tall 
lank figure of her husband appeared in the open 
doorway behind her. A long loose, open dress- 
ing-gown dangled to his knees, and his sallow, 
clean-shaven, thoughtful face wore a morning 
undress expression of youthful good-nature. He 
leaned against the door- sill, crossed his large carpet 
slippers, and looked up into the sky, drawing a 
long satisfied breath. 

“ What a beautiful morning ! ” he exclaimed. 
“ The elms over there are full of robins. We must 
get up earlier these mornings, and walk.” 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


His wife indicated the boy with the milk-pail on 
his arm, by a wave of her hand. 

“ Guess what he tells me ! ” she said. “ It 
was n’t a mistake at all, our getting no milk yester- 
day or the Sunday before. It seems that that ’s 
the custom here, at least so far as the parsonage is 
concerned.” 

“What’s the matter, boy?” asked the young 
minister, drawling his words a little, and putting a 
sense of placid irony into them. “ Don’t the cows 
give milk on Sunday, then? ” 

The boy was not going to be chaffed. “ Oh, 
I ’ll bring you milk fast enough on Sundays, if you 
give me the word,” he said with nonchalance. 
“ Only it won’t last long.” 

“How do you mean, — ‘won’t last long’?” 
asked Mrs. Ware, briskly. 

The boy liked her, — both for herself, and for 
the doughnuts fried with her own hands, which she 
gave him on his morning round. He dropped his 
half- defiant tone. 

“ The thing of it ’s this,” he explained. “ Every 
new minister starts in saying we can deliver to this 
house on Sundays, an’ then gives us notice to stop 
before the month ’s out. It ’s the trustees that 
does it.” 

The Rev. Theron Ware uncrossed his feet and 
moved out on to the stoop beside his wife. 
“ What ’s that you say ? ” he interjected. “ Don’t 
they take milk on Sundays?” 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

“ Nope ! ” answered the boy. 

The young couple looked each other in the face 
for a puzzled moment, then broke into a laugh. 

“ Well, we ’ll try it, anyway,” said the preacher. 
“ You can go on bringing it Sundays till — till — ” 

“ Till you cave in an’ tell me to stop,” put in 
the boy. “ All right ! ” and he was off on th$ 
instant, the dipper jangling loud incredulity in his 
pail as he went. 

The Wares exchanged another glance as he 
disappeared round the corner of the house, and 
another mutual laugh seemed imminent. Then 
the wife’s face clouded over, and she thrust her 
under-lip a trifle forward out of its place in the 
straight and gently firm profile. 

“ It ’s just what Wendell Phillips said,” she 
declared. " ‘ The Puritan’s idea of hell is a place 
where everybody has to mind his own business.’ ” 

The young minister stroked his chin thought- 
fully, and let his gaze wander over the backyard in 
silence. The garden parts had not been spaded 
up, but lay, a useless stretch of muddy earth, 
broken only by last year’s cabbage-stumps and 
the general litter of dead roots and vegetation. 
The door of the tenantless chicken-coop hung 
wide open. Before it was a great heap of ashes 
and cinders, soaked into grimy hardness by the 
recent spring rains, and nearer still an ancient 
chopping-block, round which were scattered old 
weather-beaten hardwood knots which had defied 


33 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the axe, parts of broken barrels and packing-boxes, 
and a nameless debris of tin cans, clam-shells, and 
general rubbish. It was pleasanter to lift the eyes, 
and look across the neighbors’ fences to the green, 
waving tops of the elms on the street beyond. 
How lofty and beautiful they were in the morning 
sunlight, and with what matchless charm came the 
song of the robins, freshly installed in their haunts 
among the new pale-green leaves ! Above them, 
in the fresh, scented air, glowed the great blue 
dome, radiant with light and the purification of 
spring. 

Theron lifted his thin, long-fingered hand, and 
passed it in a slow arch of movement to compre- 
hend this glorious upper picture. 

“ What matter any one’s ideas of hell,” he said, 
in soft, grave tones, “ when we have that to look 
at, and listen to, and fill our lungs with ? It seems 
to me that we never feel quite so sure of God’s 
goodness at other times as we do in these wonder- 
ful new mornings of spring.” 

The wife followed his gesture, and her eyes 
rested for a brief moment, with pleased interest, 
upon the trees and the sky. Then they reverted, 
with a harsher scrutiny, to the immediate fore- 
ground. 

“Those Van Sizers ought to be downright 
ashamed of themselves,” she said, “ to leave every- 
thing in such a muss as this. You must see about 
getting a man to clean up the yard, Theron. It ’s 
33 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


no use your thinking of doing it yourself. In the 
first place, it would n’t look quite the thing, and, 
second, you ’d never get at it in all your born days. 
Or if a man would cost too much, we might get a 
boy. I daresay Harvey would come around, after 
he ’d finished with his milk-route in the forenoon 
We could give him his dinner, you know, and I ’d 
bake him some cookies. He ’s got the greatest 
sweet-tooth you ever heard of. And then perhaps 
if we gave him a quarter, or say half a dollar, he ’d 
be quite satisfied. I ’ll speak to him in the morn- 
ing. We can save a dollar or so that way.” 

“ I suppose every little does help,” commented 
Mr. Ware, with a doleful lack of conviction. Then 
his face brightened. “ I tell you what let ’s do ! ” 
he exclaimed. “ Get on your street dress, and 
we ’ll take a long walk, way out into the country. 
You ’ve never seen the basin, where they float the 
log-rafts in, or the big saw-mills. The hills beyond 
give you almost mountain effects, they are so steep ; 
and they say there ’s a sulphur spring among the 
slate on the hill- side, somewhere, with trees all 
about it ; and we could take some sandwiches with 
us — ” 

“ You forget,” put in Mrs. Ware, — “ those 
trustees are coming at eleven.” 

“ So they are ! ” assented the young minister, 
with something like a sigh. He cast another re- 
luctant, lingering glance at the sunlit elm boughs, 
and, turning, went indoors. 


24. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


He loitered for an aimless minute in the kitchen, 
where his wife, her sleeves rolled to the elbow, now 
resumed the interrupted washing of the breakfast 
dishes, — perhaps with vague visions of that ever- 
receding time to come when they might have a 
hired girl to do such work. Then he wandered off 
into the room beyond, which served them alike as 
living-room and study, and let his eye run along 
the two rows of books that constituted his library 
He saw nothing which he wanted to read. Finally 
he did take down “ Paley’s Evidences,” and 
seated himself in the big armchair, — that costly 
and oversized anomaly among his humble house- 
hold gods; but the book lay unopened on his 
knee, and his eyelids half closed themselves in 
sign of revery. 

This was his third charge, — this Octavius which 
they both knew they were going to dislike so 
much. 

The first had been in the pleasant dairy and 
hop country many miles to the south, on another 
watershed and among a different kind of people. 
Perhaps, in truth, the grinding labor, the poverty 
of ideas, the systematic selfishness of later rural 
experience, had not been lacking there ; but they 
played no part in the memories which now he 
passed in tender review. He recalled instead the 
warm sunshine on the fertile expanse of fields ; the 
sleek, well-fed herds of “ milkers ” coming lowing 
down the road under the maples ; the prosperous 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and hospitable farmhouses, with their orchards in 
blossom and their spacious red barns ; the bounti- 
ful boiled dinners which cheery housewives served 
up with their own skilled hands. Of course, he 
admitted to himself, it would not be the same if 
he were to go back there again. He was conscious 
of having moved along — was it, after all, an ad- 
vance ? — to a point where it was unpleasant to 
sit at table with the unfragrant hired man, and 
still worse to encounter the bucolic confusion 
between the functions of knives and forks. But in 
those happy days — young, zealous, himself farm- 
bred — these trifles had been invisible to him, and 
life there among those kindly husbandmen had 
seemed, by contrast with the gaunt surroundings 
and gloomy rule of the theological seminary, 
luxuriously abundant and free. 

It was there too that the crowning blessedness of 
his youth — nay, should he not say of all his days ? 
— had come to him. There he had first seen 
Alice Hastings, — the bright-eyed, frank- faced, 
serenely self-reliant girl, who now, less than four 
years thereafter, could be heard washing the dishes 
out in the parsonage kitchen. 

How wonderful she had seemed to him then! 
How beautiful and all-beneficent the miracle still 
appeared ! Though herself the daughter of a 
farmer, her presence on a visit within the borders 
of his remote country charge had seemed to make 
everything there a hundred times more countrified 
* 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

than it had ever been before. She was fresh from 
the refinements of a town seminary : she read 
books ; it was known that she could play upon the 
piano. Her clothes, her manners, her way of 
speaking, the readiness of her thoughts and 
sprightly tongue, — not least, perhaps, the imposing 
current understanding as to her father’s wealth, — 
placed her on a glorified pinnacle far away from 
the girls of the neighborhood. These honest and 
good-hearted creatures indeed called ceaseless 
attention to her superiority by their deference and 
open-mouthed admiration, and treated it as the 
most natural thing in the world that their young 
minister should be visibly “ taken ” with her. 

Theron Ware, in truth, left this first pastorate of 
his the following spring, in a transfiguring halo of 
romance. His new appointment was to Tyre, — 
a somewhat distant village of traditional local pride 
and substance, — and he was to be married only a 
day or so before entering upon his pastoral duties 
there. The good people among whom he had 
begun his ministry took kindly credit to themselves 
that he had met his bride while she was “ visiting 
round ” their countryside. In part by jocose in- 
quiries addressed to the expectant groom ; in part 
by the confidences of the postmaster at the comers 
concerning the bulk and frequency of the corre- 
spondence passing between Theron and the now 
remote Alice, — they had followed the progress of 
the courtship through the autumn and winter with 
*7 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


friendly zest. When he returned from the con* 
ference, to say good-bye and confess the happiness 
that awaited him, they gave him a “ donation,” — 
quite as if he were a married pastor with a home 
of his own, instead of a shy young bachelor, who 
received his guests and their contributions in the 
house where he boarded. 

He went away with tears of mingled regret and 
proud joy in his eyes, thinking a good deal upon 
their predictions of a distinguished career before 
him, feeling infinitely strengthened and upborne 
by the hearty fervor of their God-speed, and taking 
with him nearly two wagon-loads of vegetables, 
apples, canned preserves, assorted furniture, glass 
dishes, cheeses, pieced bedquilts, honey, feathers, 
and kitchen utensils. 

Of the three years* term in Tyre, it was pleas- 
antest to dwell upon the beginning.] 

The young couple — after being married out at 
Alice’s home in an adjoining county, under the 
depressing conditions of a hopelessly bedridden 
mother, and a father and brothers whose percep- 
tions were obviously closed to the advantages of a 
matrimonial connection with Methodism — came 
straight to the house which their new congregation 
rented as a parsonage. The impulse of reaction 
from the rather grim cheerlessness of their wedding 
lent fresh gayety to their lighthearted, whimsical 
start at housekeeping. They had never laughed 
so much in all their lives as they did now in these 

23 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


first months, — over their weird ignorance o! 
domestic details ; with its mishaps, mistakes, and 
entertaining discoveries ; over the comical supera- 
bundances and shortcomings of their “ donation ,p 
outfit; over the thousand and one quaint experi- 
ences of their novel relation to each other, to the 
congregation, and to the world of Tyre at large. 

Theron, indeed, might be said never to have 
laughed before. Up to that time no friendly 
student of his character, cataloguing his admirable 
qualities, would have thought of including among 
them a sense of humor, much less a bent toward 
levity. Neither his early strenuous battle to get 
away from the farm and achieve such education as 
should serve to open to him the gates of profes- 
sional life, nor the later wave of religious enthusiasm 
which caught him up as he stood on the border- land 
of manhood, and swept him off into a veritable 
new world of views and aspirations, had been a 
likely school of merriment. People had prized 
him for his innocent candor and guileless mind, 
for his good heart, his pious zeal, his modesty about 
gifts notably above the average, but it had occurred 
to none to suspect in him a latent funny side. 

But who could be solemn where Alice was ? — 
Alice in a quandary over the complications of her 
cooking stove ; Alice boiling her potatoes all day, 
and her eggs for half an hour ; Alice ordering twenty 
pounds of steak and half a pound of sugar, and 
striving to extract a breakfast beverage from the 
*9 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


unground coffee-bean? Clearly not so tenderly 
fond and sympathetic a husband as Theron. He 
began by laughing because she laughed, and grew 
by swift stages to comprehend, then frankly to 
share, her amusement. From this it seemed only 
a step to the development of a humor of his own, 
doubling, as it were, their sportive resources. He 
found himself discovering a new droll aspect in 
men and things ; his phraseology took on a dryly 
playful form, fittingly to present conceits which 
danced up, unabashed, quite into the presence 
of lofty and majestic truths. He got from this 
nothing but satisfaction ; it obviously involved in- 
creased claims to popularity among his parishioners, 
and consequently magnified powers of usefulness, 
and it made life so much more a joy and a thing 
to be thankful for. Often, in the midst of the 
exchange of merry quip and whimsical suggestion, 
bright blossoms on that tree of strength and knowl- 
edge which he felt expanding now with a mighty 
outward pushing in all directions, he would lapse 
into deep gravity, and ponder with a swelling 
heart the vast unspeakable marvel of his blessed- 
ness, in being thus enriched and humanized by 
daily communion with the most worshipful of 
womankind. 

This happy and good young couple took the 
affections of Tyre by storm. The Methodist Church 
there had at no time held its head very high among 
the denominations, and for some years back had 
3 ° 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


been in a deplorably sinking state, owing first to 
the secession of the Free Methodists and then to 
the incumbency of a pastor who scandalized the 
community by marrying a black man to a white 
woman. But the Wares changed all this. Within 
a month the report of Theron’s charm and force 
in the pulpit was crowding the church building to 
its utmost capacity, — and that, too, with some ot 
Tyre’s best people. Equally winning was the 
atmosphere of jollity and juvenile high spirits 
which pervaded the parsonage under these new 
conditions, and which Theron and Alice seemed 
to diffuse wherever they went. 

Thus swimmingly their first year sped, amid 
universal acclaim. Mrs. Ware had a recognized 
social place, quite outside the restricted limits of 
Methodism, and shone in it with an unflagging 
brilliancy altogether beyond the traditions of Tyre. 
Delightful as she was in other people’s houses, she 
was still more naively fascinating in her own 
quaint and somewhat harum-scarum domicile ; and 
the drab, two-storied, tin-roofed little parsonage 
might well have rattled its clapboards to see if it 
was not in dreamland, — so gay was the company, 
60 light were the hearts, which it sheltered in these 
new days. As for Theron, the period was one of 
intredible fructification and output. He scarcely 
recognized for his own the mind which now was 
reaching out on all sides with the arms of an 
octopus, exploring unsuspected mines of thought, 
3 1 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


bringing in rich treasures of deduction, assimilat- 
ing, building, propounding as if by some force 
quite independent of him. He could not look 
without blinking timidity at the radiance of the 
path stretched out before him, leading upward 
to dazzling heights of greatness. 

At the end of this first year the Wares suddenly 
discovered that they were eight hundred dollars in 
debt. 

The second year was spent in arriving, by slow 
stages and with a cruel wealth of pathetic detail, 
at a realization of what being eight hundred dollars 
in debt meant. 

It was not in their elastic and buoyant natures 
to grasp the full significance of the thing at once, 
or easily. Their position in the social structure, 
too, was all against clear-sightedness in material 
matters. A general, for example, uniformed and 
in the saddle, advancing through the streets with 
his staff in the proud wake of his division’s massed 
walls of bayonets, cannot be imagined as quailing 
at the glance thrown at him by his tailor on the 
sidewalk. Similarly, a man invested with sacer- 
dotal authority, who baptizes, marries, and buries, 
who delivers judgments from the pulpit which may 
not be questioned in his hearing, and who receives 
from all his fellow-men a special deference of 
manner and speech, is in the nature of things 
prone to see the grocer’s book and the butcher’s 
bill through the little end of the telescope. 

3 2 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


The Wares at the outset had thought it right to 
trade as exclusively as possible with members of 
their own church society. This loyalty became a 
principal element of martyrdom. Theron had his 
creditors seated in serried rows before him, Sunday 
after Sunday. Alice had her critics consolidated 
among those whom it was her chief duty to visit 
and profess friendship for. These situations now 
began, by regular gradations, to unfold their ter- 
rors. At the first intimation of discontent, the 
Wares made what seemed to them a sweeping 
reduction in expenditure. When they heard that 
Brother Potter had spoken of them as “ poor pay,” 
they dismissed their hired girl. A little later, 
Theron brought himself to drop a laboriously 
casual suggestion as to a possible increase of 
salary, and saw with sinking spirits the faces of 
the stewards freeze with dumb disapprobation. 
Then Alice paid a visit to her parents, only to find 
her brothers doggedly hostile to the notion of her 
being helped, and her father so much under their 
influence that the paltry sum he dared offer barely 
covered the expenses of her journey. With an- 
other turn of the screw, they sold the piano she 
had brought with her from home, and cut them- 
selves down to the bare necessities of life, neither 
receiving company nor going out. They never 
laughed now, and even smiles grew rare. 

By this time Theron’s sermons, preached under 
that stony glare of people to whom he owed 
3 33 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

money, had degenerated to a pitiful level of com- 
monplace. As a consequence, the attendance 
became once more confined to the insufficient 
membership of the church, and the trustees com- 
plained of grievously diminished receipts. When 
the Wares, grown desperate, ventured upon the 
experiment of trading outside the bounds of the 
congregation, the trustees complained again, this 
time peremptorily. 

Thus the second year dragged itself miserably 
to an end. Nor was relief possible, because the 
Presiding Elder knew something of the circum- 
stances, and felt it his duty to send Theron back 
for a third year, to pay his debts, and drain the 
cup of disciplinary medicine to its dregs. 

The worst has been told. Beginning in utter 
blackness, this third year, in the second month, 
brought a change as welcome as it was unlooked 
for. An elderly and important citizen of Tyre, by 
name Abram Beekman, whom Theron knew slightly, 
and had on occasions seen sitting in one of the back 
pews near the door, called one morning at the par- 
sonage, and electrified its inhabitants by expressing 
a desire to wipe off all their old scores for them, 
and give them a fresh start in life. As he put the 
suggestion, they could find no excuse for rejecting 
it. He had watched them, and heard a good deal 
about them, and took a fatherly sort of interest in 
them. He did not deprecate their regarding the 
aid he proffered them in the nature of a loan, but 
34 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


they were to make themselves perfectly easy about 
it, and never return it at all unless they could spare 
it sometime with entire convenience, and felt that 
they wanted to do so. As this amazing windfall 
finally took shape, it enabled the Wares to live 
respectably through the year, and to leave Tyre 
with something over one hundred dollars in hand. 

It enabled them, too, to revive in a chastened 
form their old dream of ultimate success and dis- 
tinction for Theron. He had demonstrated clearly 
enough to himself, during that brief season of un- 
restrained effulgence, that he had within him the 
making of a great pulpit orator. He set to work 
now, with resolute purpose, to puzzle out and 
master all the principles which underlie this art, 
and all the tricks that adorn its superstructure. 
He studied it, fastened his thoughts upon it, talked 
daily with Alice about it. In the pulpit, addressing 
those people who had so darkened his life and 
crushed the first happiness out of his home, he 
withheld himself from any oratorical display which 
could afford them gratification. He put aside, as 
well, the thought of attracting once more the non- 
Methodists of Tyre, whose early enthusiasm had 
spread such pitfalls for his unwary feet. He 
practised effects now by piecemeal, with an alert 
ear, and calculation in every tone. An ambition, 
at once embittered and tearfully solicitous, pos- 
sessed him. 

He reflected now, this morning, with a certain 

35 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


incredulous interest, upon that unworthy epoch in 
his life history, which seemed so far behind him, 
and yet had come to a close only a few weeks ago. 
The opportunity had been given him, there at the 
Tecumseh Conference, to reveal his quality. He 
had risen to its full limit of possibilities, and 
preached a great sermon in a manner which he at 
least knew was unapproachable. He had made 
his most powerful bid for the prize place, had 
trebly deserved success — and had been banished 
instead to Octavius ! 

The curious thing was that he did not resent his 
failure. Alice had taken it hard, but he himself 
was conscious of a sense of spiritual gain. The 
influence of the Conference, with its songs and 
seasons of prayer and high pressure of emotional 
excitement, was still strong upon him. It seemed 
years and years since the religious side of him had 
been so stirred into motion. He felt, as he lay 
back in the chair, and folded his hands over the 
book on his knee, that he had indeed come forth 
from the fire purified and strengthened. The 
ministry to souls diseased beckoned him with a 
new and urgent significance. He smiled to re- 
member that Mr. Beekman, speaking in his shrewd 
and pointed way, had asked him whether, looking 
it all over, he did n’t think it would be better for 
him to study law, with a view to sliding out of the 
ministry when a good chance offered. It amazed 
him now to recall that he had taken this hint seri- 
36 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

ously, and even gone to the length of finding out 
what books law- students began upon. 

Thank God ! all that was past and gone now. 
The Call sounded, resonant and imperative, in his 
ears, and there was no impulse of his heart, no 
fibre of his being, which did not stir in devout 
response. He closed his eyes, to be the more 
wholly alone with the Spirit, that moved him. 

The jangling of a bell in the hallway broke 
sharply upon his meditations, and on the instant 
his wife thrust in her head from the kitchen. 

“ You ’ll have to go to the door, Theron ! ” she 
warned him, in a loud, swift whisper. “ I ’m not 
fit to be seen. It ’s the trustees.” 

“All right,” he said, and rose slowly from 
sprawling recumbency to his feet. “ I ’ll go.” 

“And don’t forget,” she added strenuously; “ I 
believe in Levi Gorringe ! I ’ve seen him go past 
here with his rod and fish-basket twice in eight 
days, and that ’s a good sign. He ’s got a soft side 
somewhere. And just keep a stiff upper lip about 
the gas, and don’t you let them jew you down a 
solitary cent on that sidewalk.” 

“All right,” said Theron, again, and moved 
reluctantly toward the hall-door. 


CHAPTER III 


When the three trustees had been shown in by 
the Rev. Mr. Ware, and had taken seats, an awk- 
ward little pause ensued. The young minister 
looked doubtingly from one face to another, the 
while they glanced with inquiring interest about 
the room, noting the pictures and appraising the 
furniture in their minds. 

The obvious leader of the party, Loren Pierce, 
a rich quarryman, was an old man of medium size 
and mean attire, with a square, beardless face as 
hard and impassive in expression as one of his 
blocks of limestone. The irregular, thin-lipped 
mouth, slightly sunken, and shut with vice-like 
firmness, the short snub nose, and the little eyes 
squinting from half-closed lids beneath slightly 
marked brows, seemed scarcely to attain to the 
dignity of features, but evaded attention instead, 
as if feeling that they were only there at all from 
plain necessity, and ought not to be taken into 
account. Mr. Pierce’s face did not know how to 
smile, — what was the use of smiles ? — but its 
whole surface radiated secretiveness. Portrayed 
on canvas by a master brush, with a ruff or a red 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

lobe for masquerade, generations of imaginative 
amateurs would have seen in it vast-reaching 
plots, the skeletons of a dozen dynastic cupboards, 
the guarded mysteries of half a century’s inter 
national diplomacy. The amateurs would have 
been wrong again. There was nothing behind 
Mr. Pierce’s juiceless countenance more weighty 
than a general determination to exact seven per 
cent for his money, and some specific notions 
about capturing certain brickyards which were 
interfering with his quarry-sales. But Octavius 
watched him shamble along its sidewalks quite 
as the Vienna of dead and forgotten yesterday 
might have watched Metternich. 

Erastus Winch was of a breezier sort, — a florid, 
stout, and sandy man, who spent most of his life 
driving over evil country roads in a buggy, secur- 
ing orders for dairy furniture and certain allied 
lines of farm utensils. This practice had given 
him a loud voice and a deceptively hearty manner, 
to which the other avocation of cheese -buyer, 
which he pursued at the Board of Trade meetings 
every Monday afternoon, had added a consider- 
able command of persuasive yet non-committal 
language. To look at him, still more to hoar him, 
one would have sworn he was a good fellow, a 
trifle rough and noisy, perhaps, but all right at 
bottom. But the County Clerk of Dearborn 
County could have told you of agriculturists who 
knew Erastus from long and unhappy experience, 
39 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and who held him to be even a tighter man thai 
Loren Pierce in the matter of a mortgage. 

The third trustee, Levi Gorringe, set one won- 
dering at the very first glance what on earth he 
was doing in that company. Those who had 
known him longest had the least notion; but it 
may be added that no one knew him well. He 
was a lawyer, and had lived in Octavius for up- 
wards of ten years ; that is to say, since early man- 
hood. He had an office on the main street, just 
under the principal photograph gallery. Doubt- 
less he was sometimes in this office; but his 
fellow-townsmen saw him more often in the street 
doorway, with the stairs behind him, and the flar- 
ing show-cases of the photographer on either side, 
standing with his hands in his pockets and an 
unlighted cigar in his mouth, looking at nothing 
in particular. About every other day he went off 
after breakfast into the country roundabout, some- 
times with a rod, sometimes with a gun, but always 
alone. He was a bachelor, and slept in a room 
at the back of his office, cooking some of his 
meals himself, getting others at a restaurant close 
by. Though he had little visible practice, he was 
understood to be well-to-do and even more, and 
people tacitly inferred that he “ shaved notes.” 
The Methodists of Octavius looked upon him as 
a queer fish, and through nearly a dozen years 
had never quite outgrown their hebdomadal ten- 
dency to surprise at seeing him enter their church. 

40 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


He had never, it is true, professed religion, but 
they had elected him as a trustee now for a 
number of terms, all the same, — partly because he 
was their only lawyer, partly because he, like both 
his colleagues, held a mortgage on the church 
edifice and lot. In person, Mr. Gorringe was a 
slender man, with a skin of a clear, uniform citron 
tint, black waving hair, and dark gray eyes, and a 
thin, high-featured face. He wore a mustache 
and pointed chin-tuft ; and, though he was of New 
England parentage and had never been further 
south than Ocean Grove, he presented a general 
effect of old Mississippian traditions and tastes 
startlingly at variance with the standards of Dear- 
born County Methodism. Nothing could con- 
vince some of the elder sisters that he was not a 
drinking man. 

The three visitors had completed their survey 
of the room now ; and Loren Pierce emitted a dry, 
harsh little cough, as a signal that business was 
about to begin. At this sound, Winch drew up 
his feet, and Gorringe untied a parcel of account- 
books and papers that he held on his knee. 
Theron felt that his countenance must be exhibit- 
ing to the assembled brethren an unfortunate sense 
of helplessness in their hands. He tried to look 
more resolute, and forced his lips into a smile. 

“ Brother Gorringe alius acts as Seckertary,” 
said Erastus Winch, beaming broadly upon the 
minister, as if the mere mention of the fact pro* 
4i 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

moted jollity. “ That ’s it, Brother Gorringe, — 
take your seat at Brother Ware’s desk. Mind the 
Dominie’s pen don’t play tricks on you, an’ start 
off writin’ out sermons instid of figgers.” The 
humorist turned to Theron as the lawyer walked 
over to the desk at the window. “ I alius have to 
caution him about that,” he remarked with great 
joviality. “An’ do you look out afterwards, 
Brother Ware, or else you ’ll catch that pen o’ 
yours scribblin’ lawyer’s lingo in place o’ the 
Word.” 

Theron felt bound to exhibit a grin in acknowl- 
edgment of this pleasantry. The lawyer’s change 
of position had involved some shifting of the 
others’ chairs, and the young minister found him- 
self directly confronted by Brother Pierce’s hard 
and colorless old visage. Its little eyes were 
watching him, as through a mask, and under their 
influence the smile of politeness fled from his lips. 
The lawyer on his right, the cheese-buyer to the 
left, seemed to recede into distance as he for the 
moment returned the gaze of the quarryman. 
He waited now for him to speak, as if the others 
were of no importance. 

“We are a plain sort o’ folks up in these 
parts,” said Brother Pierce, after a slight further 
pause. His voice was as dry and rasping as his 
cough, and its intonations were those of author- 
ity. “We walk here,” he went on, eying the 
minister with a sour regard, “in a meek an’ 
42 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


humble spirit, in the straight an* narrow way which 
leadeth unto life. We ain’t gone traipsin’ after 
strange gods, like some people that call them- 
selves Methodists in other places. We stick by 
the Discipline an’ the ways of our fathers in Israel. 
No new-fangled notions can go down here. Your 
wife ’d better take them flowers out of her bunnit 
afore next Sunday.” 

Silence possessed the room for a few moments, 
the while Theron, pale-faced and with brows knit, 
studied the pattern of the ingrain carpet. Then 
he lifted his head, and nodded it in assent. 
“Yes,” he said; “we will do nothing by which 
our ‘ brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made 
weak.’ ” 

Brother Pierce’s parchment face showed no sign 
of surprise or pleasure at this easy submission. 
“ Another thing : We don’t want no book-learnin’ 
or dictionary words in our pulpit,” he went on 
coldly. “ Some folks may stomach ’em ; we won’t. 
Them two sermons o’ yours, p’r’aps they ’d do 
down in some city place ; but they ’re like your 
wife’s bunnit here, they ’re too flowery to suit 
us. What we want to hear is the plain, old-fash- 
ioned Word of God, without any palaver or ‘ hems 
and ha’s.’ They tell me there ’s some parts 
where hell ’s treated as played-out, — where our 
ministers don’t like to talk much about it because 
people don’t want to hear about it. Such preach- 
ers Ught to be put out. They ain't Methodists at 
43 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


all. What we want here, sir, is straight-out, flat- 
footed hell, — the burnin’ lake o’ fire an’ brim- 
stone. Pour it into ’em, hot an’ strong. We 
can’t have too much of it. Work in them awful 
deathbeds of Voltaire an’ Tom Paine, with the 
Devil right there in the room, reachin’ for ’em, 
an’ they yellin’ for fright ; that ’s what fills the 
anxious seat an’ brings in souls hand over fist.” 

Theron’s tongue dallied for an instant with the 
temptation to comment upon these old-wife fables, 
which were so dear to the rural religious heart 
when he and I were boys. But it seemed wiser 
to only nod again, and let his mentor go on. 

“ We ain’t had no trouble with the Free Meth- 
odists here,” continued Brother Pierce, “jest 
because we kept to the old paths, an’ seek for 
salvation in the good old way. Everybody can 
shout ‘ Amen ! ’ as loud and as long as the Spirit 
moves him, with us. Some one was sayin’ you 
thought we ought to have a choir and an organ. 
No, sirree ! No such tom- foolery for us ! You ’ll 
only stir up feelin’ agin yourself by hintin’ at such 
things. And then, too, our folks don’t take no 
stock in all that pack o’ nonsense about science, 
such as tellin’ the age of the earth by crackin’ up 
stones. I ’ve b’en in the quarry line all my life, 
an’ / know it ’s all humbug ! Why, they say 
some folks are goin’ round now preachin’ that our 
grandfathers were all monkeys. That comes from 
departin’ from the ways of our forefathers, an* 
44 


\ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

ytittin* in organs an’ choirs, an’ deckin’ our 
women-folks out with gewgaws, an’ apin’ the 
fashions of the worldly. I should n’t wonder if 
them kind did have some monkey blood in ’em. 
You ’ll find we ’re a different sort here.” 

The young minister preserved silence for a little, 
until it became apparent that the old trustee had 
had his say out. Even then he raised his head 
slowly, and at last made answer in a hesitating 
and irresolute way. 

“ You have been very frank,” he said. “ I am 
obliged to you. A clergyman coming to a new 
charge cannot be better served than by having 
laid before him a clear statement of the views and 
— and spiritual tendencies — of his new flock, 
quite at the outset. I feel it to be of especial 
value in this case, because I am young in years 
and in my ministry, and am conscious of a great 
weakness of the flesh. I can see how daily con- 
tact with a people so attached to the old, simple, 
primitive Methodism of Wesley and Asbury may 
be a source of much strength to me. I may take 
it,” he added upon second thought, with an 
inquiring glance at Mr. Winch, “that Brother 
Pierce’s description of our charge, and its tastes 
and needs, meets with your approval?” 

Erastus Winch nodded his head and smiled ex- 
pansively. “ Whatever Brother Pierce says, goes ! ” 
he declared. The lawyer, sitting behind at the 
desk by the window, said nothing. 

45 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“The place is jest overrun with Irish,” Brother 
Pierce began again. “ They ’ve got two Catholic 
churches here now to our one, and they do jest 
as they blamed please, at the charter elections. 
It ’d be a good idee to pitch into Catholics in gen- 
eral whenever you can. You could make a hit 
that way. I say the State ought to make ’em pay 
taxes on their church property. They ’ve no right 
to be exempted, because they ain’t Christians at 
all. They ’re idolaters, that ’s what they are ! I 
know ’em! I ’ve had ’em in my quarries for years, 
an’ they ain’t got no idee of decency or fair dealin’. 
Every time the price of stone went up, every man 
of ’em would jine to screw more wages out o’ me. 
Why, they used to keep account o’ the amount o’ 
business I done, an’ figger up my profits, an’ have 
the face to come an’ talk to me about ’em, as if 
that had anything to do with wages. It ’s my 
belief their priests put ’em up to it. People don’t 
begin to reelize, — that church of idolatry ’ll be the 
ruin o’ this country, if it ain’t checked in time. 
Jest you go at ’em hammer ’n’ tongs ! I ’ve got 
Eyetalians in the quarries now. They ’re sensible 
fellows : they know when they ’re well off ; a 
dollar a day, an’ they ’re satisfied, an’ everything 
goes smooth.” 

“ But they ’re Catholics, the same as the Irish,” 
suddenly interjected the lawyer, from his place by 
the window. Theron pricked up his ears at the 
sound of his voice. There was an anti-Pierce note 
46 _ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


in it, so to speak, which it did him good to hear. 
The consciousness of sympathy began on the 
instant to inspire him with courage. 

“ I know some people say they are,” Brother 
Pierce guardedly retorted ; “ but I ’ve summered 
an’ wintered both kinds, an’ / hold to it they’re 
different. I grant ye, the Eyetalians are some 
given to jabbin’ knives into each other, but they 
never git up strikes, an’ they don’t grumble about 
wages. Why, look at the way they live, — jest 
some weeds an’ yarbs dug up on the roadside, an’ 
stewed in a kettle with a piece o’ fat the size o’ 
your finger, an’ a loaf o’ bread, an’ they ’re happy 
as a king. There ’s some sense in that ; but the 
Irish, they ’ve got to have meat an’ potatoes an’ 
butter jest as if — as if — ” 

“ As if they ’d b’en used to ’em at home,” put 
in Mr. Winch, to help his colleague out. 

The lawyer ostentatiously drew up his chair to 
the desk, and began turning over the leaves of his 
biggest book. “It’s getting on toward noon, 
gentlemen,” he said, in an impatient voice. 

The business meeting which followed was for a 
considerable time confined to hearing extracts 
from the books and papers read in a swift and 
formal fashion by Mr. Gorringe. If this was 
intended to inform the new pastor of the exact 
financial situation in Octavius, it lamentably failed 
of its purpose. Theron had little knowledge of 
figures; and though he tried hard to listen, 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and to assume an air of comprehension, he 
did not understand much of what he heard. In a 
general way he gathered that the church property 
was put down at $12,000, on which there was a 
debt of $4,800. The annual expenses were 
$2,250, of which the principal items were $800 for 
his salary, $170 for the rent of the parsonage, and 
$319 for interest on the debt. It seemed that last 
year the receipts had fallen just under $2,000, and 
they now confronted the necessity of making good 
this deficit during the coming year, as well as 
increasing the regular revenues. Without much 
discussion, it was agreed that they should endeavor 
to secure the services of a celebrated “ debt-raiser,” 
early in the autumn, and utilize him in the closing 
days of a revival. 

Theron knew this “ debt-raiser,” and had seen 
him at work, — a burly, bustling, vulgar man who 
took possession of the pulpit as if it were an auc- 
tioneer’s block, and pursued the task of exciting 
liberality in the bosoms of the congregation by alter- 
nating prayer, anecdote, song, and cheap buffoonery 
in a manner truly sickening. Would it not be pre- 
ferable, he feebly suggested, to raise the money by 
a festival, or fair, or some other form of entertain- 
ment which the ladies could manage ? 

Brother Pierce shook his head with contempt- 
uous emphasis. “Our women-folks ain’t that 
kind,” he said. “ They did try to hold a sociable 
once, but nobody came, and we did n’t raise 
48 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

more ’n three or four dollars. It ain’t their line. 
They lack the worldly arts. As the Discipline 
commands, they avoid the evil of putting on gold 
and costly apparel, and taking such diversions as 
cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus.” 

“Well — of course — if you prefer the ‘debt- 
raiser * — ” Theron began, and took the itemized 
account from Gorringe’s knee as an excuse for 
not finishing the hateful sentence. 

He looked down the foolscap sheet, line by line, 
with no special sense of what it signified, until his 
eye caught upon this little section of the report, 
bracketed by itself in the Secretary’s neat hand : 

Interest Charge. 

First mortgage (1873) . . $1,000 . . (E. Winch) . @ 7 . $ 70 
Second mortgage (1876) . 1,700 . . (L. Gorringe) @ 6 . 102 
Third mortgage (1878) . 2,100 . . (L. Pierce) . . @ 7 . 147 

$4,800 $319 

It was no news to him that the three mortgages 
on the church property were held by the three 
trustees. But as he looked once more, another 
feature of the thing struck him as curious. 

“ I notice that the rates of interest vary,” he 
remarked without thinking, and then wished the 
words unsaid, for the two trustees in view moved 
uneasily on their seats. 

“ Oh, that ’s nothing,” exclaimed Erastus Winch, 
with a boisterous display of jollity. “ It ’s only 
Brother Gorringe’s pleasant little way of making a 
4 49 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


contribution to our funds. You will notice that, at 
the date of all these mortgages, the State rate of 
interest was seven per cent. Since then it *s b’en 
lowered to six. Well, when that happened, you 
see, Brother Gorringe, not being a professin’ mem- 
ber, and so not bound by our rules, he could just 
as well as not let his interest down a cent. But 
Brother Pierce an’ me, we talked it over, an’ we 
made up our minds we were tied hand an’ foot by 
our contract. You know how strong the Discipline 
lays it down that we must be bound to the letter of 
our agreements. That bein’ so, we seen it in the 
light of duty not to change what we ’d set our hands 
to. That ’s how it is, Brother Ware.” 

“ I understand,” said Theron, with an effort at 
polite calmness of tone. “ And — is there any- 
thing else?” 

“ There ’s this,” broke in Brother Pierce : “ we’re 
commanded to be law-abiding people, an’ seven 
per cent was the law — an’ would be now if them 
ragamuffins in the Legislation — ” 

“ Surely we need n’t go further into that,” in- 
terrupted the minister, conscious of a growing 
stiffness in his moral spine. " Have we any other 
business before us?” 

Brother Pierce’s little eyes snapped, and the 
wrinkles in his forehead deepened angrily. 
" Business?” he demanded. “ Yes, plenty of it. 
We ’ve got to reduce expenses. We ’re nigh onto 
$300 behind-hand this minute. Besides your house* 
5 ° . 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

rent, you get $800 free an’ clear, — that is $15.38 
every week, an’ only you an’ your wife to keep out 
of it. Why, when I was your age, young man, and 
after that too, I was glad to get $6 a week.” 

“ I don’t think my salary is under discussion, 
Mr. Pierce — ” 

“ Brother Pierce ! ” suggested Winch, in a half- 
chuckling undertone. 

“ Brother Pieice, then ! ” echoed Theron, im- 
patiently. “The Quarterly Conference and the 
Estimating Committee deal with that. The trus- 
tees have no more to do with it than the man in 
the moon.” 

“Come, come, Brother Ware,” put in Erastus 
Winch, “ we must n’t have no hard feelin’s. 
Brotherly love is what we ’re all lookin’ after. 
Brother Pierce’s meanin’ was n’t agin your drawin* 
your full salary, every cent of it, only — only there 
are certain little things connected with the parson- 
age here that we feel you ought to bear. F’r in- 
stance, there ’s the new sidewalk we had to lay in 
front of the house here only a month ago. Of 
course, if the treasury was flush we would n’t say a 
word about it. An’ then there ’s the gas bill here. 
Seein’ as you get your rent for nothin’, it don’t 
seem much to ask that you should see to lightin’ 
the place yourself.” 

“No, I don’t think that either is a proper 
charge upon me,” interposed Theron. “ I decline 
to pay them.” 




THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“We can have the gas shut off,” remarked 
Brother Pierce, coldly. 

“ As soon as you like,” responded the minister, 
sitting erect and tapping the carpet nervously with 
his foot. “ Only you must understand that I will 
take the whole matter to the Quarterly Confer- 
ence in July. I already see a good many other 
interesting questions about the financial manage- 
ment of this church which might be appropriately 
discussed there.” 

“ Oh, come, Brother Ware ! ” broke in Trustee 
Winch, with a somewhat agitated assumption of 
good-feeling. “ Surely these are matters we ought 
to settle amongst ourselves. We never yet asked 
outsiders to meddle with our business here. It ’s 
our motto, Brother Ware. I say, if you ’ve got a 
motto, stand by it.” 

“ Well, my motto,” said Theron, “ is to be be- 
haved decently to by those with whom I have to 
deal ; and I also propose to stand by it.” 

Brother Pierce rose gingerly to his feet, with 
the hesitation of an old man not sure about his 
knees. When he had straightened himself, he put 
on his hat, and eyed the minister sternly frOu> 
beneath its brim. 

“The Lord gives us crosses grievous to our 
natur’,” he said, “ an’ we ’re told to bear ’em 
cheerfully as long as they’re on our backs; but 
there ain’t nothin’ said agin our unloadin’ ’em 
in the ditch the minute we git the chance. I 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


guess you won’t last here more ’n a twelve- 
month.” 

He pulled his soft and discolored old hat down 
over his brows with a significantly hostile nod, 
and, turning, stumped toward the hall-door without 
offering to shake hands. 

The other trustees had risen likewise, in tacit 
recognition that the meeting was over. Winch 
clasped the minister’s hand in his own broad, 
hard palm, and squeezed it in an exuberant grip. 
“ Don’t mind his little ways, Brother Ware,” he 
urged in a loud, unctuous whisper, with a grin- 
ning backward nod : “ he ’s a trifle skittish some- 
times when you don’t give him free rein; but 
he ’s all wool an’ a yard wide when it comes to 
right-down hard-pan religion. My love to Sister 
Ware ; ” and he followed the senior trustee into 
the hall. 

Mr. Gorringe had been tying up his books and 
papers. He came now with the bulky parcel 
under his arm, and his hat and stick in the other 
hand. He could give little but his thumb to 
Theron to shake. His face wore a grave expres- 
sion, and not a line relaxed as, catching the 
minister’s look, he slowly covered his left eye in a 
deliberate wink. 

• ••••••• 

“Well? — and how did it go off?” asked Alice, 
from where she knelt by the oven door, a few 
minutes later. 


S3 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


For answer, Theron threw himself wearily into 
the big old farm rocking-chair on the other side of 
the stove, and shook his head with a lengthened 
sigh. ^ 

“ If it was n’t for that man Gorringe of yours,” 
he said dejectedly, “ I think / should feel like 
going off — and learning a trade.” 


CHAPTER IV ! 


On the following Sunday, young Mrs. Ware 
sat alone in the preacher’s pew through the 
morning service, and everybody noted that the 
roses had been taken from her bonnet. In the 
evening she was absent, and after the doxology 
and benediction several people, under the pretence 
of solicitude for her health, tried to pump her 
husband as to the reason. He answered their 
inquiries civilly enough, but with brevity : she had 
stayed at home because she did not feel like com- 
ing out, — this and nothing more. 

The congregation dispersed under a gossip- 
laden cloud of consciousness that there must be 
something queer about Sister Ware. There was 
a tolerably general agreement, however, that the 
two sermons of the day had been excellent. Not 
even Loren Pierce’s railing commentary on the 
pastor’s introduction of an outlandish word like 
epitome — clearly forbidden by the Discipline’s 
injunction to plain language understood of the 
people — availed to sap the satisfaction of the 
majority. 

Theron himself comprehended that he had 
pleased the bulk of his auditors ; the knowledge 

55 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


left him curiously hot and cold. On the one hand, 
there was joy in the apparent prospect that the 
congregation would back him up in a stand against 
the trustees, if worst came to worst. But, on the 
other, the bonnet episode entered his soul. It 
had been a source of bitter humiliation to him to 
see his wife sitting there beneath the pulpit, shorn 
by despotic order of the adornments natural to her 
pretty head. But he had even greater pain in 
contemplating the effect it had produced upon 
Alice herself. She had said not a word on the 
subject, but her every glance and gesture seemed 
to him eloquent of deep feeling about it. He 
made sure that she blamed him for having de- 
fended his own gas and sidewalk rights with 
successful vigor, but permitted the sacrifice of her 
poor little inoffensive roses without a protest. In 
this view of the matter, indeed, he blamed himself. 
Was it too late to make the error good? He 
ventured a hint on this Sunday evening, when he 
returned to the parsonage and found her reading 
an old weekly newspaper by the light of the 
kitchen lamp, to the effect that he fancied there 
would be no great danger in putting those roses 
back into her bonnet. Without lifting her eyes 
from the paper, she answered that she had no 
earthly desire to wear roses in her bonnet, and 
went on with her reading. 

At breakfast next morning Theron found him- 
self in command of an unusual fund of humorous 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


good spirits, and was at pains to make the most 
of it, passing whimsical comments on subjects 
which the opening day suggested, recalling quaint 
and comical memories of the past, and striving his 
best to force Alice into a laugh. Formerly her 
merry temper had always ignited at the merest 
spark of gayety. Now she gave his jokes only 
a dutiful half-smile, and uttered scarcely a word in 
response to his running fire of talk. When the 
meal was finished, she went silently to work to 
clear away the dishes. 

Theron turned over in his mind the project 
of offering to help her, as he had done so often in 
those dear old days when they laughingly began life 
together. Something decided this project in the 
negative for him, and after a few lingering moments 
he put on his hat and went out for a walk. 

Not even the most doleful and trying hour of 
his bitter experience in Tyre had depressed him 
like this. Looking back upon those past troubles, 
he persuaded himself that he had borne them all 
with a light and cheerful heart, simply because 
Alice had been one with him in every thought and 
emotion. How perfect, how ideally complete, 
their sympathy had always been ! With what 
absolute unity of mind and soul they had walked 
that difficult path together ! And now — hence- 
forth — was it to be different? The mere sugges- 
tion of such a thing chilled his veins. He said 
aloud to himself as he walked that life would be 
57 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


an intolerable curse if Alice were to cease sharing 
it with him in every conceivable phase. 

He had made his way out of the town, and 
tramped along the country hill-road for a consider- 
able distance, before a merciful light began to 
lessen the shadows in the picture of gloom with 
which his mind tortured itself. All at once he 
stopped short, lifted his head, and looked about 
him. The broad valley lay warm and tranquil in 
the May sunshine at his feet. In the thicket up 
the side-hill above him a gray squirrel was chatter- 
ing shrilly, and the birds sang in tireless choral 
confusion. Theron smiled, and drew a long breath. 
The gay clamor of the woodland songsters, the 
placid radiance of the landscape, were suddenly 
taken in and made a part of his new mood. He 
listened, smiled once more, and then started in a 
leisurely way back toward Octavius. 

How could he have been so ridiculous as to 
fancy that Alice — his Alice — had been changed 
into some one else ? He marvelled now at his own 
perverse folly. She was overworked, tired out, 
— that was all. The task of moving in, of setting 
the new household to rights, had been too much 
for her. She must have a rest. They must get in 
a hired girl. 

Once this decision about a servant fixed itself 
in the young minister’s mind, it drove out the 
last vestige of discomfort. He strode along now 
in great content, revolving idly a dozen different 

-58 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


plans for gilding and beautifying this new life of 
leisure into which his sanguine thoughts projected 
Alice. One of these particularly pleased him, and 
waxed in definiteness as he turned it over and 
over. He would get another piano for her, in 
place of that which had been sacrificed in Tyre. 
That beneficent modern invention, the instalment 
plan, made this quite feasible, — so easy, in fact, 
that it almost seemed as if he should find his wife 
playing on the new instrument when he got home. 
He would stop in at the music store and see about 
it that very day. 

Of course, now that these important resolutions 
had been taken, it would be a good thing if he 
could do something to bring in some extra money. 
This was by no means a new notion. He had 
mused over the possibility in a formless way ever 
since that memorable discovery of indebtedness in 
Tyre, and had long ago recognized the hopeless- 
ness of endeavor in every channel save that of 
literature. Latterly his fancy had been stimulated 
by reading an account of the profits which Canon 
Farrar had derived from his " Life of Christ.” If 
such a book could command such a bewildering 
multitude of readers, Theron felt that there ought 
to be a chance for him. So clear did constant 
rumination render this assumption that the young 
pastor in time had come to regard this prospective 
book of his as a substantial asset, which could be 
realized without trouble whenever he got around 
to it. 59 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


He had not, it is true, gone to the length or 
seriously considering what should be the subject 
of his book. That had not seemed to him to 
matter much, so long as it was scriptural. Famili- 
arity with the process of extracting a fixed amount 
of spiritual and intellectual meat from any casual 
text, week after week, had given him an idea that 
any one of many subjects would do, when the 
time came for him to make a choice. He realized 
now that the time for a selection had arrived, and 
almost simultaneously found himself with a ready- 
made decision in his mind. The book should be 
about Abraham ! 

Theron Ware was extremely interested in the 
mechanism of his own brain, and followed its 
workings with a lively curiosity. Nothing could 
be more remarkable, he thought, than to thus 
discover that, on the instant of his formulating a 
desire to know what he should write upon, lo, and 
behold ! there his mind, quite on its own initiative, 
had the answer waiting for him ! When he had 
gone a little further, and the powerful range of 
possibilities in the son’s revolt against the idolatry 
of his father, the image-maker, in the exodus from 
the unholy city of Ur, and in the influence of the 
new nomadic life upon the little deistic family 
group, had begun to unfold itself before him, he 
felt that the hand of Providence was plainly dis- 
cernible in the matter. The book was to be 
blessed from its very inception. 

6 © 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Walking homeward briskly now, with his eye* 
on the sidewalk and his mind all aglow witn crowd- 
ing suggestions for the new work, and impatience 
to be at it, he came abruptly upon a group of men 
and boy:, who occupied the whole path, and were 
moving forward so noiselessly that he had not 
heard them coming. He almost ran into the 
leader of this little procession, and began a stam- 
mering apology, the final words of which were left 
unspoken, so solemnly heedless of him and his 
talk were all the faces he saw. 

In the centre of the group were four working- 
men, bearing between them an extemporized litter 
of two poles and a blanket hastily secured across 
them with spikes. Most of what this litter held 
was covered by another blanket, rounded in coarse 
folds over a shapeless bulk. From beneath its 
farther end protruded a big broom-like black 
beard, thrown upward at such an angle as to hide 
everything beyond to those in front. The tall 
young minister, stepping aside and standing tip- 
toe, could see sloping downward behind this hedge 
of beard a pinched and chalk-like face, with wide- 
open, staring eyes. Its lips, of a dull lilac hue, 
were moving ceaselessly, and made a dry, clicking 
sound. 

Theron instinctively joined himself to those 
who followed the litter, — a motley dozen of street 
idlers, chiefly boys. One of these in whispers 
explained to him that the man was one of Jerry 

61 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Madden’s workmen in the wagon-shops, who had 
been deployed to trim an elm-tree in front of his 
employer’s house, and, being unused to such work, 
had fallen from the top and broken all his bones. 
They would have cared for him at Madden’s 
house, but he had insisted upon being taken home. 
His name was MacEvoy, and he was Joey Mac- 
Evoy’s father, and likewise Jim’s and Hughey’s 
and Martin’s. After a pause the lad, a bright- 
eyed, freckled, barefooted wee Irishman, volun- 
teered the further information that his big brother 
had run to bring “ Father Forbess,” on the chance 
that he might be in time to administer " extry 
munction.” 

The way of the silent little procession led 
through back streets — where women hanging up 
clothes in the yards hurried to the gates, their 
aprons full of clothes-pins, to stare open-mouthed 
at the passers-by — and came to a halt at last in 
an irregular and muddy lane, before one of a half 
dozen shanties reared among the ash-heaps and 
debris of the town’s most bedraggled outskirts. 

A stout, middle-aged, red-armed woman, already 
warned by some messenger of calamity, stood 
waiting on the roadside bank. There were whim- 
pering children clinging to her skirts, and a sur- 
rounding cluster of women of the neighborhood, 
some of the more elderly of whom, shrivelled little 
crones in tidy caps, and with their aprons to their 
eyes, were beginning in a low- murmured minor 
62 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the wail which presently should rise into the 
keen of death. Mrs. MacEvoy herself made no 
moan, and her broad ruddy face was stern in ex- 
pression rather than sorrowful. When the litter 
stopped beside her, she laid a hand for an instant 
on her husband’s wet brow, and locked — one 
could have sworn impassively — into his staring 
eyes. Then, still without a word, she waved the 
bearers toward the door, and led the way herself. 

Theron, somewhat wonderingly, found himself, 
a minute later, inside a dark and ill- smelling room, 
the air of which was humid with the steam from a 
boiler of clothes on the stove, and not in other 
ways improved by the presence of a jostling score 
of women, all straining their gaze upon the open 
door of the only other apartment, — the bed- 
chamber. Through this they could see the work- 
men laying MacEvoy on the bed, and standing 
awkwardly about thereafter, getting in the way of 
the wife and old Maggie Quirk as they strove to 
remove the garments from his crushed limbs. As 
the neighbors watched what could be seen of 
these proceedings, they whispered among them- 
selves eulogies of the injured man’s industry and 
good temper, his habit of bringing his money home 
to his wife, and the way he kept his Father Ma- 
thew pledge and attended to his religious duties. 
They admitted freely that, by the light of his ex- 
ample, their own husbands and sons left much to 
be desired, and from this wandered easily off into 

<53 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


domestic digressions of their own. But all the 
while their eyes were bent upon the bedroom 
door ; and Theron made out, after he had grown 
accustomed to the gloom and the smell, that many 
of them were telling their beads even while they 
kept the muttered conversation alive. None of 
them paid any attention to him, or seemed to 
regard his presence there as unusual. 

Presently he saw enter through the sunlit street 
doorway a person of a different class. The bright 
light shone for a passing instant upon a fashion- 
able, flowered hat, and upon some remarkably 
brilliant shade of red hair beneath it. In another 
moment there had edged along through the throng, 
to almost within touch of him, a tall young woman, 
the owner of this hat and wonderful hair. She 
was clad in light and pleasing spring attire, and 
carried a parasol with along oxidized silver handle 
of a quaint pattern. She looked at him, and he 
saw that her face was of a lengthened oval, with 
a luminous rose-tinted skin, full red lips, and big 
brown, frank eyes with heavy auburn lashes. She 
made a grave little inclination of her head toward 
him, and he bowed in response. Since her arrival, 
he noted, the chattering of the others had entirely 
ceased. 

“I followed the others in, in the hope that I 
might be of some assistance,” he ventured to ex- 
plain to her in a low murmur, feeling that at last 
here was some one to whom an explanation of his 
64 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

presence in this Romish house was due. “ I hope 
they won’t feel that I have intruded.” 

She nodded her head as if she quite understood. 
“They’ll take the will for the deed,” she whis- 
pered back. “Father Forbes will be here in a 
minute. Do you know is it too late ? ” 

Even as she spoke, the outer doorway was 
darkened by the commanding bulk of a new- 
comer’s figure. The flash of a silk hat, and the 
deferential way in which the assembled neighbors 
fell back to clear a passage, made his identity clear. 
Theron felt his blood tingle in an unaccustomed 
way as this priest of a strange church advanced 
across the room, — a broad-shouldered, portly man 
of more than middle height, with a shapely, strong- 
lined face of almost waxen pallor, and a firm, com- 
manding tread. He carried in his hands, besides 
his hat, a small leather-bound case. To this and 
to him the women courtesied and bowed their 
heads as he passed. 

“ Come with me,” whispered the tall girl with 
the parasol to Theron ; and he found himself push- 
ing along in her wake until they intercepted the 
priest just outside the bedroom door. She touched 
Father Forbes on the arm. 

“Just to tell you that I am here,” she said. 
The priest nodded with a grave face, and passed 
into the other room. In a minute or two the 
workmen, Mrs. MacEvoy, and her helper came 
out, and the door was shut behind them. 

s _ 65 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

“ He is making his confession,” explained the 
young lady. “ Stay here for a minute.” 

She moved over to where the woman of the 
house stood, glum-faced and tearless, and whis- 
pered something to her. A confused movement 
among the crowd followed, and out of it presently 
resulted a small table, covered with a white cloth, 
and bearing on it two unlighted candles, a basin 
of water, and a spoon, which was brought forward 
and placed in readiness before the closed door. 
Some of those nearest this cleared space were 
kneeling now, and murmuring a low buzz of prayer 
to the click of beads on their rosaries. 

The door opened, and Theron saw the priest 
standing in the doorway with an uplifted hand. 
He wore now a surplice, with a purple band over 
his shoulders, and on his pale face there shone a 
tranquil and tender light. 

One of the workmen fetched from the stove a 
brand, lighted the two candles, and bore the table 
with its contents into the bedroom. The young 
woman plucked Theron’s sleeve, and he dumbly 
followed her into the chamber of death, making 
one of the group of a dozen, headed by Mrs. 
MacEvoy and her children, which filled the little 
room, and overflowed now outward to the street 
door. He found himself bowing with the others 
to receive the sprinkled holy water from the priest’s 
white fingers; kneeling with the others for the 
prayers ; following in impressed silence with the 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


others the strange ceremonial by which the priest 
traced crosses of holy oil with his thumb upon 
the eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, and feet of the 
dying man, wiping off the oil with a piece of 
cotton-batting each time after he had repeated 
the invocation to forgiveness for that particular 
sense. But most of all he was moved by the rich, 
novel sound of the Latin as the priest rolled it 
forth in the Asperges me , Domine , and Misereatur 
vestri omnipotens Deus , with its soft Continental 
vowels and liquid ^’s. It seemed to him that he 
had never really heard Latin before. Then the 
astonishing young woman with the red hair de- 
claimed the Confiteor , vigorously and with a reso- 
nant distinctness of enunciation. It was a different 
Latin, harsher and more sonorous; and while it 
still dominated the murmured undertone of the 
other’s prayers, the last moment came. 

Theron had stood face to face with death at 
many other bedsides ; no other final scene had 
stirred him like this. It must have been the girl’s 
Latin chant, with its clanging reiteration of the 
great names, — beatum Michaelem Archangeliim , 
beatum Joannem Baptistam , sanctos Apostolos 
Petrum et Paulum , — invoked with such proud 
confidence in this squalid little shanty, which so 
strangely affected him. 

He came out with the others at last, — the 
candles and the folded hands over the crucifix 
left behind, — and walked as one in a dream. 

67 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Even by the time that he had gained the outer 
doorway, and stood blinking at the bright light 
and filling his lungs with honest air once more, 
it had begun to seem incredible to him that he 
had seen and done all this. 


CHAPTER V 


While Mr. Ware stood thus on the doorstep, 
through a minute of formless musing, the priest 
and the girl came out, and, somewhat to his con- 
fusion, made him one of their party. He felt 
himself flushing under the idea that they would 
think he had waited for them — was thrusting 
himself upon them. The notion prompted him 
to bow frigidly in response to Father Forbes* 
pleasant “I am glad to meet you, sir,” and his 
outstretched hand. 

“ I dropped in by the — the merest accident/* 
Theron said. “I met them bringing the poor 
man home, and — and quite without thinking, I 
obeyed the impulse to follow them in, and did n’t 
realize — ** 

He stopped short, annoyed by the reflection 
that this was his second apology. The girl smiled 
placidly at him, the while she put up her parasol. 

“ It did me good to see you there,” she said, 
quite as if she had known him all her life. “ And 
so it did the rest of us.** 

Father Forbes permitted himself a soft little 
chuckle, approving rather than mirthful, and 
patted her on the shoulder with the air of being 
fifty years her senior instead of fifteen. To the 

69 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


minister’s relief, he changed the subject as the 
three started together toward the road. 

“Then, again, no doctor was sent for!” he 
exclaimed, as if resuming a familiar subject with 
the girl. Then he turned to Theron. “ I dare- 
say you have no such trouble ; but with our poorer 
people it is very vexing. They will not call in a 
physician, but hurry off first for the clergyman. 
I don’t know that it is altogether to avoid doctor’s 
bills, but it amounts to that in effect. Of course 
in this case it made no difference ; but I have had 
to make it a rule not to go out at night unless they 
bring me a physician’s card with his assurance that 
it is a genuine affair. Why, only last winter, I was 
routed up after midnight, and brought off in the 
mud and pelting rain up one of the new streets 
on the hillside there, simply because a factory girl 
who was laced too tight had fainted at a dance. 
I slipped and fell into a puddle in the darkness, 
ruined a new overcoat, and got drenched to the 
skin ; and when I arrived the girl had recovered 
and was dancing away again, thirteen to the dozen. 
It was then that I made the rule. I hope, Mr. 
Ware, that Octavius is producing a pleasant im- 
pression upon you so far?” 

“ I scarcely know yet,” answered Theron. The 
genial talk of the priest, with its whimsical anec- 
dote, had in truth passed over his head. His 
mind still had room for nothing but that novel 
death-bed scene, with the winged captain of the 
7 ° 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


angelic host, the Baptist, the glorified Fisherman, 
and the Preacher, all being summoned down in 
the pomp of liturgical Latin to help MacEvoy to 
die. “ If you don’t mind my saying so,” he added 
hesitatingly, “what I have just seen in there did 
make a very powerful impression upon me.” 

“ It is a very ancient ceremony,” said the 
priest ; “ probably Persian, like the baptismal form, 
although, for that matter, we can never dig deep 
enough for the roots of these things. They all 
turn up Turanian if we probe far enough. Our 
ways separate here, I ’m afraid. I am delighted 
to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Ware. Pray 
look in upon me, if you can as well as not. We 
are near neighbors, you know.” 

Father Forbes had shaken hands, and moved 
off up another street some distance, before the 
voice of the girl recalled Theron to himself. 

“ Of course you knew him by name,” she was say- 
ing, “ and he knew you by sight, and had talked of 
you ; but my poor inferior sex has to be introduced. 
I am Celia Madden. My father has the wagon- 
shops, and I — I play the organ at the church.” 

“I — I am delighted to make your acquaint- 
ance,” said Theron, conscious as he spoke that he 
had slavishly echoed the formula of the priest. 
He could think of nothing better to add than, 
“ Unfortunately, we have no organ in our church.” 

The girl laughed, as they resumed their walk 
down the street. “ I ’m afraid I could n’t under- 
7i 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


take two,” she said, and laughed again. Then 
she spoke more seriously. “ That ceremony must 
have interested you a good deal, never having 
seen it before. I saw that it was all new to you, 
and so I made bold to take you under my wing, 
so to speak.” 

“ You were very kind,” said the young minister. 
“ It was really a great experience for me. May — 
may I ask, is it a part of your functions, in the 
church, I mean, to attend these last rites ? ” 

“ Mercy, no ! ” replied the girl, spinning the 
parasol on her shoulder and smiling at the thought. 
“ No ; it was only because MacEvoy was one of 
our workmen, and really came by his death through 
father sending him up to trim a tree. Ann Mac- 
Evoy will never forgive us that, the longest day she 
lives. Did you notice her? She would n’t speak 
to me. After you came out, I tried to tell her 
that we would look out for her and the children ; 
but all she would say to me was : ‘ An’ fwat would 
a wheelwright, an’ him the father of a family, be 
doin’ up a tree ? ’ ” 

They had come now upon the main street of 
the village, with its flagstone sidewalk overhung 
by a lofty canopy of elm-boughs. Here, for the 
space of a block, was concentrated such fashion- 
able elegance of mansions and ornamental lawns 
as Octavius had to offer; and it was presented 
with the irregularity so characteristic of our restless 
civilization. Two or three of the houses survived 
72 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


untouched from the earlier days, — prim, decorous 
structures, each with its gabled centre and lower 
wings, each with its row of fluted columns support- 
ing the classical roof of a piazza across its whole 
front, each vying with the others in the whiteness 
of those wooden walls enveloping its bright green 
blinds. One had to look over picket fences to 
see these houses, and in doing so caught the 
notion that they thus railed themselves off in pride 
at being able to remember before the railroad 
came to the village, or the wagon-works were 
thought of. 

Before the neighboring properties the fences 
had been swept away, so that one might stroll 
from the sidewalk straight across the well-trimmed 
sward to any one of a dozen elaborately modem 
doorways. Some of the residences, thus frankly 
proffering friendship to the passer-by, were of 
wood painted in drabs and dusky reds, with bulg- 
ing windows which marked the native yearning 
for the mediaeval, and shingles that strove to be 
accounted tiles. Others — - a prouder, less preten- 
tious sort — were of brick or stone, with terra-cotta 
mouldings set into the walls, and with real slates 
covering the riot of turrets and peaks and dormer 
peepholes overhead. 

Celia Madden stopped in front of the largest 
and most important-looking of these new edifices, 
and said, holding out her hand : “ Here I am, 
once more. Good-morning, Mr. Ware.” 

72 > 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

Theron hoped that his manner did not betray 
the flash of surprise he felt in discovering that his 
new acquaintance lived in the biggest house in 
Octavius. He remembered now that some one 
had pointed it out as the abode of the owner of 
the wagon factories; but it had not occurred to 
him before to associate this girl with that village 
magnate. It was stupid of him, of course, because 
she had herself mentioned her father. He looked 
at her again with an awkward smile, as he formally 
shook the gloved hand she gave him, and lifted 
his soft hat. The strong noon sunlight, [forcing its 
way down between the elms, and beating upon 
her parasol of lace-edged, creamy silk, made a halo 
about her hair and face at once brilliant and 
tender. He had not seen before how beautiful 
she was. She nodded in recognition of his salute, 
and moved up the lawn walk, spinning the sunshade 
on her shoulder. 

Though the parsonage was only three blocks 
away, the young minister had time to think about 
a good many things before he reached home. 

First of all, he had to revise in part the arrange- 
ment of his notions about the Irish. Save for an 
occasional isolated and taciturn figure among the 
nomadic portion of the hired help in the farm 
country, Theron had scarcely ever spoken to a 
person of this curiously alien race before. He 
remembered now that there had been some dozen 
pr more Irish families in Tyre, quartered in the 
74 . 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


outskirts among the brickyards, but he had never 
come in contact with any of them, or given to their 
existence even a passing thought. So far as per- 
sonal acquaintance went, the Irish had been to 
him only a name. 

But what a sinister and repellent name ! His 
views on this general subject were merely those 
common to his communion and his environment. 
He took it for granted, for example, that in the 
large cities most of the poverty and all the drunk- 
enness, crime, and political corruption were due 
to the perverse qualities of this foreign people, — 
qualities accentuated and emphasized in every evil 
direction by the baleful influence of a false and 
idolatrous religion. It is hardly too much to say that 
he had never encountered a dissenting opinion on 
this point. His boyhood had been spent in those 
bitter days when social, political, and blood preju- 
dices were fused at white heat in the public crucible 
together. When he went to the Church Seminary, 
it was a matter of course that every member of the 
faculty was a Republican, and that every one of his 
classmates had come from a Republican household. 
When, later on, he entered the ministry, the rule 
was still incredulous of exceptions. One might as 
well have looked in the Nedahma Conference for 
a divergence of opinion on the Trinity as for a 
difference in political conviction. Indeed, even 
among the laity, Theron could not feel sure that 
he had ever known a Democrat; that is, at all 
75 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


closely. He understood very little about politics* 
it is true. If he had been driven into a corner, 
and forced to attempt an explanation of this tre- 
mendous partisan unanimity in which he had a 
share, he would probably have first mentioned the 
War, — the last shots of which were fired while he 
was still in petticoats. Certainly his second reason, 
however, would have been that the Irish were on 
the other side. 

He had never before had occasion to formulate, 
even in his own thoughts, this tacit race and 
religious aversion in which he had been bred. It 
rose now suddenly in front of him, as he sauntered 
from patch to patch of sunlight under the elms, 
like some huge, shadowy, and symbolical monu- 
ment. He looked at it with wondering curiosity, 
as at something he had heard of all his life, but 
never seen before, — an abhorrent spectacle, truly ! 
The foundations upon which its dark bulk reared 
itself were ignorance, squalor, brutality, and vice. 
Pigs wallowed in the mire before its base, and 
burrowing into this base were a myriad of narrow 
doors, each bearing the hateful sign of a saloon, 
and giving forth from its recesses of night the 
sounds of screams and curses. Above were sculp- 
tured rows of lowering, ape-like faces from Nast’s 
and Keppler’s cartoons, and out of these sprang 
into the vague upper gloom, on the one side, 
lamp-posts from which negroes hung by the neck, 
and on the other gibbets for dynamiters and Molly 
9b 


THE DAMNATION OF TIIERON WARE 


Maguires; and between the two glowed a spec- 
tral picture of some black-robed, tonsured men, 
with leering satanic masks, making a bonfire of 
the Bible in the public schools. 

Theron stared this phantasm hard in the face, 
and recognized it for a very tolerable embodiment 
of what he had heretofore supposed he thought 
about the Irish. For an instant, the sight of it 
•made him shiver, as if the sunny May had of a 
sudden lapsed into bleak December. Then he 
smiled, and the bad vision went off into space. 
He saw instead Father Forbes, in the white and 
purple vestments, standing by poor MacEvoy’s 
bedside, with his pale, chiselled, luminous, uplifted 
face, and he heard only the proud, confident 
clanging of the girl’s recital, — beatum Michaelem 
Arc hange turn, beatum Joannem Baptistam t Petruin 
et Paulum — e?n f atn / um / — like strokes on a 
great resonant alarm-bell, attuned for the hearing 
of heaven. He caught himself on the very verge 
of feeling that heaven must have heard. 

Then he smiled again, and laid the matter aside, 
with a parting admission that it had been undoubt- 
edly picturesque and impressive, and that it had 
been a valuable experience to him to see it. At 
least the Irish, with all their faults, must have a 
poetic strain, or they would not have clung so tena- 
ciously to those curious and ancient forms. He 
recalled having heard somewhere, or read, it might 
be, that they were a people much given to songs 

n 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and music. And the young lady, that very hand- 
some and friendly Miss Madden, had told him that 
she was a musician ! He had a new pleasure in 
turning this over in his mind. Of all the closed 
doors which his choice of a career had left along 
his pathway, no other had for him such a magical 
fascination as that on which was graven the lute of 
Orpheus. He knew not even the alphabet of 
music, and his conceptions of its possibilities ran 
but little beyond the best of the hymn-singing he 
had heard at Conferences, yet none the less the 
longing for it raised on occasion such mutiny in 
his soul that more than once he had specifically 
prayed against it as a temptation. 

Dangerous though some of its tendencies might 
be, there was no gainsaying the fact that a love for 
music was in the main an uplifting influence, — 
an attribute of cultivation. The world was the 
sweeter and more gentle for it. And this brought 
him to musing upon the odd chance that the two 
people of Octavius who had given him the first 
notion of polish and intellectual culture in the 
town should be Irish. The Romish priest must 
have been vastly surprised at his intrusion, yet had 
been at the greatest pains to act as if it were quite 
the usual thing to have Methodist ministers assist 
at Extreme Unction. And the young woman, — 
how gracefully, with what delicacy, had she com- 
prehended his position and robbed it of all its 
possible embarrassments ! It occurred to him that 
*8 


TtiE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


they must have passed, there in front of her home, 
the very tree from which the luckless wheelwright 
had fallen some hours before ; and the fact that she 
had forborne to point it out to him took form in 
his mind as an added proof of her refinement of 
nature. 

The midday dinner was a little more than ready 
when Theron reached home, and let himself in by 
the front door. On Mondays, owing to the mois- 
ture and “ clutter ” of the weekly washing in the 
kitchen, the table was laid in the sitting-room, and 
as he entered from the hall the partner of his joys 
bustled in by the other door, bearing the steaming 
platter of corned beef, dumplings, cabbages, and 
carrots, with arms bared to the elbows, and a red 
face. It gave him great comfort, however, to note 
that there were no signs of the morning’s displeas- 
ure remaining on this face ; and he immediately 
remembered again those interrupted projects of 
his about the piano and the hired girl. 

“ Well ! I ’d just about begun to reckon that I 
was a widow,” said Alice, putting down her fragrant 
burden. There was such an obvious suggestion of 
propitiation in her tone that Theron went around 
and kissed her. He thought of saying something 
about keeping out of the way because it was “ Blue 
Monday,” but held it back lest it should sound like 
a reproach. 

“ Well, what kind of a washerwoman does this one 
turn out to be ? ” he asked, after they were seated, 
79 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and he had invoked a blessing and was cutting 
vigorously into the meat. 

“ Oh, so-so,” replied Alice ; “ she seems to be 
particular, but she ’s mortal slow. If I had n’t stood 
right over her, we should n’t have had the clothes 
out till goodness knows when. And of course she ’s 
Irish!” 

“Well, what of that f” asked the minister, with 
a fine unconcern. 

Alice looked up from her plate, with knife and 
fork suspended in air. “ Why, you know we were 
talking only the other day of what a pity it was that 
none of our own people went out washing,” she 
said. “ That Welsh woman we heard of could n’t 
come, after all ; and they say, too, that she pre- 
sumes dreadfully upon the acquaintance, being a 
church member, you know. So we simply had to 
fall back on the Irish. And even if they do go and 
tell their priest everything they see and hear, why, 
there ’s one comfort, they can tell about us and 
welcome. Of course I see to it she does n’t snoop 
around in here.” 

Theron smiled. “That’s all nonsense about 
their telling such things to their priests,” he said 
with easy confidence. 

“ Why, you told me so yourself, ” replied Alice, 
briskly. “ And I ’ve always understood so, too ; 
they’re bound to tell everything in confession. 
That’s what gives the Catholic Church such a 
tremendous hold. You ’ve spoken of it often.” 

So 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ It must have been by way of a figure of speech,” 
remarked Theron, not with entire directness. 
“ Women are great hands to separate one’s obser- 
vations from their context, and so give them mean- 
ings quite unintended. They are also great hands,” 
he added genially, “ or at least one of them is, 
at making the most delicious dumplings in the world. 
I believe these are the best even you ever made.” 

Alice was not unmindful of the compliment, but 
her thoughts were on other things. “ I should n’t 
like that woman’s priest, for example,” she said, “ to 
know that we had no piano.” 

“ But if he comes and stands outside our house 
every night and listens, — as of course he will,” 
said Theron, with mock gravity, “ it is only a 
question of time when he must reach that conclu- 
sion for himself. Our only chance, however, is that 
there are some sixteen hundred other houses for 
him to watch, so that he may not get around to us 
for quite a spell. Why, seriously, Alice, what on 
earth do you suppose Father Forbes knows or cares 
about our poor little affairs, or those of any other 
Protestant household in this whole village ? He has 
his work to do, just as I have mine, — only his is 
ten times as exacting in everything except sermons, 
— and you may be sure he is only too glad when 
it is over each day, without bothering about things 
that are none of his business.” 

“ All the same, I ’m afraid of them,” said Alice, 
as if argument were exhausted. 

6 St 


CHAPTER VI 


On the following morning young Mr. Ware anti- 
cipated events by inscribing in his diary for the 
day, immediately after breakfast, these remarks : 
“ Arranged about piano. Began work upon book.” 

The date indeed deserved to be distinguished 
from its fellows. Theron was so conscious of its 
importance that he not only prophesied in the little 
morocco-bound diary which Alice had given him 
for Christmas, but returned after he had got out 
upon the front steps of the parsonage to have his 
hat brushed afresh by her. 

“ Wonders will never cease,” she said jocosely. 
“ With you getting particular about your clothes, 
there is n’t anything in this wide world that can’t 
happen now ! ” 

“One doesn’t go out to bring home a piano 
every day,” he made answer. “ Besides, I want to 
make such an impression upon the man that he 
will deal gently with that first cash payment down. 
Do you know,” he added, watching her turn the 
felt brim under the wisp-broom’s strokes, " I ’m 
thinking some of getting me a regular silk stove- 
pipe hat.” 


8a 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

"Why don’t yon, then? ” she rejoined, but with- 
out any ring of glad acquiescence in her tone. He 
fancied that her face lengthened a little, and he 
instantly ascribed it to recollections of the way in 
which the roses had been bullied out of her own 
headgear. 

“ You are quite sure, now, pet,” he made haste 
to change the subject, "that the hired girl canwai/ 
just as well as not until fall ? ” 

“ Oh, my, yes ! ” Alice replied, putting the hat on 
his head, and smoothing back his hair behind his 
ears. “ She ’d only be in the way now. You see, 
with hot weather coming on, there won’t be much 
cooking. We ’ll take all our meals out here, and 
that saves so much work that really what remains is 
hardly more than taking care of a bird-cage. And, 
besides, not having her will ali&Jst half pay for the 
piano.” 

“ But when cold weather comes, you ’re sure 
you ’ll consent? ” he urged. 

“ Like a shot ! ” she assured him, and, after a 
happy little caress, he started out again on his 
momentous mission. 

“ Thurston’s ” was a place concerning which 
opinions differed in Octavius. That it typified 
progress, and helped more than any other feature 
of the village to bring it up to date, no one indeed 
disputed. One might move about a great deal, in 
truth, and hear no other view expressed. But then 
again one might stumble into conversation with one 
83 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


small storekeeper after another, and learn that they 
united in resenting the existence of •* Thurston’s,” 
as rival farmers might join to curse a protracted 
drought. Each had his special flaming grievance. 
The little dry-goods dealers asked mournfully how 
they could be expected to compete with an estab- 
lishment which could buy bankrupt stocks at a 
hundred different points, and make a profit if only 
one-third of the articles were sold for more than 
they would cost from the jobber? The little boot 
and shoe dealers, clothiers, hatters, and furriers, the 
small merchants in carpets, crockery, and furniture, 
the venders of hardware and household utensils, of 
leathern goods and picture-frames, of wall-paper, 
musical instruments, and even toys, — all had the 
same pathetically unanswerable question to pro- 
pound. But mostly they put it to themselves, 
because the others were at “ Thurston’s.” 

The Rev. Theron Ware had entertained rather 
strong views on this subject, and that only a week 
or two ago. One of his first acquaintances in 
Octavius had been the owner of the principal 
book-store in the place, — a gentle and bald old 
man who produced the complete impression of a 
bibliophile upon what the slightest investigation 
showed to be only a meagre acquaintance with 
publishers’ circulars. But at least he had the air 
of loving his business, and the young minister had 
enjoyed a long talk with, or rather, at him. Out 
of this talk had come the information that the 
84 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


store was losing money. Not even the stationery 
department now showed a profit worth mentioning. 
When Octavius had contained only five thousand 
inhabitants, it boasted four book-stores, two of 
them good ones. Now, with a population more 
than doubled, only these latter two survived, and 
they must soon go to the wall. The reason? It 
was in a nutshell. A book which sold at retail 
for one dollar and a half cost the bookseller 
ninety cents. If it was at all a popular book, 
“ Thurston’s ” advertised it at eighty-nine cents, — 
and in any case at a profit of only two or three 
cents. Of course it was done to widen the estab- 
lishment’s patronage, — to bring people into the 
store. Equally of course, it was destroying the 
book business and debauching the reading tastes 
of the community. Without the profits from the 
light and ephemeral popular literature of the sea- 
son, the book-store proper could not keep up its 
stock of more solid works, and indeed could not 
long keep open at all. On the other hand, “ Thur- 
ston’s ” dealt with nothing save the demand of the 
moment, and offered only the books which were 
the talk of the week. Thus, in plain words, the 
book trade was going to the dogs, and it was the 
same with pretty nearly every other trade. 

Theron was indignant at this, and on his return 
home told Alice that he desired her to make no 
purchases whatever at “ Thurston’s.” He even 
resolved to preach a sermon on the subject of the 
85 _ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


modern idea of admiring the great for crushing 
the small, and sketched out some notes for it 
which he thought solved the problem of flaying 
the local abuse without mentioning it by name. 
They had lain on his desk now for ten days or 
more, and on only the previous Friday he had 
speculated upon using them that coming Sunday. 

On this bright and cheerful Tuesday morning 
he walked with a blithe step unhesitatingly down 
the main street to “ Thurston’s/’ and entered 
without any show of repugnance the door next to 
the window wherein, flanked by dangling banjos 
and key-bugles built in pyramids, was displayed 
the sign, “ Pianos on the Instalment Plan.” 

He was recognized by some responsible persons, 
and treated with distinguished deference. They 
were charmed with the intelligence that he desired 
a piano, and fascinated by his wish to pay for it 
only a little at a time. They had special terms 
for clergymen, and made him feel as if these were 
being extended to him on a silver charger by 
kneeling admirers. 

It was so easy to buy things here that he was a 
trifle disturbed to find his flowing course inter- 
rupted by his own entire ignorance as to what 
kind of piano he wanted. He looked at all they 
had in stock, and heard them played upon. They 
differed greatly in price, and, so he fancied, almost 
as much in tone. It discouraged him to note, 
however, that several of those he thought the 
86 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


finest in tone were among the very cheapest in the 
lot. Pondering this, and staring in hopeless puz- 
zlement from one to another of the big black shiny 
monsters, he suddenly thought of something. 

“I would rather not decide for myself,” he 
said, “I know so little about it. If you don’t 
mind, I will have a friend of mine, a skilled mu- 
sician, step in and make a selection. I have so 
much confidence in — in her judgment.’’ He 
added hurriedly, “ It will involve only a day or 
two’s delay.” 

The next moment he was sorry he had spoken. 
What would they think when they saw the organist 
of the Catholic church come to pick out a piano for 
the Methodist parsonage? And how could he 
decorously prefer the request to her to undertake 
this task? He might not meet her again for ages, 
and to his provincial notions writing would have 
seemed out of the question. And would it not be 
disagreeable to have her know that he was buying 
a piano by part payments? Poor Alice’s dread 
of the washerwoman’s gossip occurred to him, at 
this, and he smiled in spite of himself. Then 
all at once the difficulty vanished. Of course it 
would come all right somehow. Everything did. 

He was on firmer ground, buying the materials 
for the new book, over on the stationery side. 
His original intention had been to bestow this 
patronage upon the old bookseller, but these 
suavely smart people in “ Thurston’s ” had had 
87 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the effect of putting him on his honor when they 
asked, “ Would there be anything else ? ” and he 
had followed them unresistingly. 

He indulged to the full his whim that everything 
entering into the construction of “ Abraham” 
should be spick-and-span. He watched with his 
own eyes a whole ream of broad glazed white 
paper being sliced down by the cutter into single 
sheets, and thrilled with a novel ecstasy as he laid 
his hand upon the spotless bulk, so wooingly did 
it invite him to begin. He tried a score of pens 
before the right one came to hand. When a box 
of these had been laid aside, with ink and pen- 
holders and a little bronze inkstand, he made a 
sign that the outfit was complete. Or no — there 
must be some blotting-paper. He had always 
used those blotting-pads given away by insurance 
companies, — his congregations never failed to 
contain one or more agents, who had these to 
bestow by the armful, — but the book deserved a 
virgin blotter. 

Theron stood by while all these things were 
being tied up together in a parcel. The sugges- 
tion that they should be sent almost hurt him. 
Oh, no, he would carry them home himself. So 
strongly did they appeal to his sanguine imagi- 
nation that he could not forbear hinting to the 
man who had shown him the pianos and was now 
accompanying him to the door that this package 
under his arm represented potentially the price 
88 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

of the piano he was going to have. He did it in 
a roundabout way, with one of his droll, hesitating 
smiles. The man did not understand at all, and 
Theron had not the temerity to repeat the remark. 
He strode home with the precious bundle as fast 
as he could. 

“ I thought it best, after all, not to commit 
myself to a selection,” he explained about the 
piano at dinner-time. “ In such a matter as this, 
the opinion of an expert is everything. I am 
going to have one of the principal musicians of 
the town go and try them all, and tell me which 
we ought to have.” 

“ And while he ’s about it,” said Alice, “ you 
might ask him to make a little list of some of the 
new music. I Ve got way behind the times, being 
without a piano so long. Tell him not any very 
difficult pieces, you know.” 

“ Yes, I know,” put in Theron, almost hastily, 
and began talking of other things. His conver- 
sation was of the most rambling and desultory 
sort, because all the while the two lobes of his 
brain, as it were, kept up a dispute as to whether 
Alice ought to have been told that this “ principal 
musician ” was of her own sex. It would certainly 
have been better, at the outset, he decided ; but 
to mention it now would be to invest the fact with 
undue importance. Yes, that was quite clear; 
only the clearer it became, from one point of view, 
the shadier it waxed from the other. The prob- 
*9 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


lem really disturbed the young minister’s mind 
throughout the meal, and his abstraction became 
so marked at last that his wife commented upon it. 

“ A penny for your thoughts ! ” she said, with 
cheerful briskness. This ancient formula of the 
farm-land had always rather jarred on Theron. 
It presented itself now to his mind as a peculiarly 
aggravating banality. 

“ I am going to begin my book this afternoon,” 
he remarked impressively. “ There is a great 
deal to think about.” 

It turned out that there was even more to think 
about than he had imagined. After hours of soli- 
tary musing at his desk, or of pacing up and down 
before his open book-shelves, Theron found the 
first shadows of a May-day twilight beginning to 
fall upon that beautiful pile of white paper, still 
unstained by ink. He saw the book he wanted 
to write before him, in his mental vision, much 
more distinctly than ever, but the idea of begin- 
ning it impetuously, and hurling it off hot and 
glowing week by week, had faded away like a 
dream. 

This long afternoon, spent face to face with a pro- 
ject born of his own brain but yesterday, yet already 
so much bigger than himself, was really a most fruitful 
time for the young clergyman. The lessons which 
cut most deeply into our consciousness are those 
we learn from our children. Theron, in this first 
day’s contact with the offspring of his fancy, found 
90 


THE DAMNATION OF TIIERON WARE 


revealed to him an unsuspected and staggering 
truth. It was that he was an extremely ignorant 
and rudely untrained young man, whose preten- 
sions to intellectual authority among any edu- 
tated people would be laughed at with deserved 
contempt. 

Strangely enough, after he had weathered the 
first shock, this discovery did not dismay Theron 
Ware. The very completeness of the conviction 
it carried with it, saturated his mind with a feeling 
as if the fact had really been known to him all 
along. And there came, too, after a little, an almost 
pleasurable sense of the importance of the revela- 
tion. He had been merely drifting in fatuous and 
conceited blindness. Now all at once his eyes 
were open ; he knew what he had to do. Igno- 
rance was a thing to be remedied, and he would 
forthwith bend all his energies to cultivating his 
mind till it should blossom like a garden. In this 
mood, Theron mentally measured himself against 
the more conspicuous of his colleagues in the Con- 
ference. They also were ignorant, clownishly igno- 
rant : the difference was that they were doomed 
by native incapacity to go on all their lives with- 
out ever finding it out. It was obvious to him that 
his case was better. There was bright promise in 
the very fact that he had discovered his short- 
comings. 

He had begun the afternoon by taking down 
from their places the various works in his meagre 

9 * 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


library which bore more or less relation to the task 
in hand. The threescore books which constituted 
his printed possessions were almost wholly from 
the press of the Book Concern ; the few exceptions 
were volumes which, though published elsewhere, 
had come to him through that giant circulating 
agency of the General Conference, and wore the 
stamp of its approval. Perhaps it was the sight of 
these half-filled shelves which started this day’s 
great revolution in Theron’s opinions of himself. 
He had never thought much before about owning 
books. He had been too poor to buy many, and 
the conditions of canvassing about among one’s 
parishioners which the thrifty Book Concern im- 
poses upon those who would have without buying, 
had always repelled him. Now, suddenly, as he 
moved along the two shelves, he felt ashamed at 
their beggarly showing. 

“The Land and the Book,” in three portly 
volumes, was the most pretentious of the aids 
which he finally culled from his collection. Beside 
it he laid out “ Bible Lands,” “ Rivers and Lakes 
of Scripture,” “ Bible Manners and Customs,” the 
“ Genesis and Exodus ” volume of Whedon’s 
Commentary, some old numbers of the “ Methodist 
Quarterly Review,” and a copy of “Josephus” 
which had belonged to his grandmother, and had 
seen him through many a weary Sunday afternoon 
in boyhood. He glanced casually through these, 
one by one, as he took them down, and began to 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

fear that they were not going to be of so much 
use as he had thought. Then, seating himself, he 
read carefully through the thirteen chapters of 
Genesis which chronicle the story of the founder 
of Israel. 

Of course he had known this story from his 
earliest years. In almost every chapter he came 
now upon a phrase or an incident which had 
served him as the basis for a sermon. He had 
preached about Hagar in the wilderness, about 
Lot’s wife, about the visit of the angels, about the 
intended sacrifice of Isaac, about a dozen other 
things suggested by the ancient narrative. Some- 
how this time it all seemed different to him. The 
people he read about were altered to his vision. 
Heretofore a poetic light had shone about them, 
where indeed they had not glowed in a halo of 
sanctification. Now, by some chance, this light 
was gone, and he saw them instead as untutored 
and unwashed barbarians, filled with animal lusts 
and ferocities, struggling by violence and foul 
chicanery to secure a foothold in a country which 
did not belong to them, — all rude tramps and 
robbers of the uncivilized plain. 

The apparent fact that Abram was a Chaldean 
struck him with peculiar force. How was it, he 
wondered, that this had never occurred to him 
before ? Examining himself, he found that he had 
supposed vaguely that there had been Jews from 
the beginning, or at least, say, from the flood* 

- 93 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


But, no, Abram was introduced simply as a citizev 
of the Chaldean town of Ur, and there was no 
hint of any difference in race between him and 
his neighbors. It was specially mentioned that 
his brother, Lot’s father, died in Ur, the city of his 
nativity. Evidently the family belonged there, 
and were Chaldeans like the rest. 

I do not cite this as at all a striking discovery, 
but it did have a curious effect upon Theron Ware. 
Up to that very afternoon, his notion of the kind 
of book he wanted to write had been founded 
upon a popular book called “ Ruth the Moabitess,” 
written by a clergyman he knew very well, the 
Rev. E. Ray Mifflin. This model performance 
troubled itself not at all with difficult points, but 
went swimmingly along through scented summer 
seas of pretty rhetoric, teaching nothing, it is true, 
but pleasing a good deal and selling like hot cakes. 
Now, all at once Theron felt that he hated that sort 
of book. His work should be of a vastly different 
order. He might fairly assume, he thought, that 
if the fact that Abram was a Chaldean was new to 
him, it would fall upon the world in general as a 
novelty. Very well, then, there was his chance. 
He would write a learned book, showing who the 
Chaldeans were, and how their manners and 
beliefs differed from, and influenced — 

It was at this psychological instant that the 
wave of self-condemnation suddenly burst upon 
and submerged the young clergyman. It passed 
94 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


again, leaving him staring fixedly at the pile of 
books he had taken down from the shelves, ai^d 
gasping a little, as if for breath. Then the humor- 
ous side of the thing, perversely enough, appealed 
to him, and he grinned feebly to himself at the 
joke of his having imagined that he could write 
learnedly about the Chaldeans, or anything else. 
But, no, it should n’t remain a joke ! His long 
mobile face grew serious under the new resolve. 
He would learn what there was to be learned 
about the Chaldeans. He rose and walked up 
and down the room, gathering fresh strength of 
purpose as this inviting field of research spread 
out its vistas before him. Perhaps — yes, he 
would incidentally explore the mysteries of the 
Moabitic past as well, and thus put the Rev. E. 
Ray Mifflin to confusion on his own subject. 
That would in itself be a useful thing, because 
Mifflin wore kid gloves at the Conference, and 
affected an intolerable superiority of dress and 
demeanor, and there would be general satisfaction 
among the plainer and worthier brethren at seeing 
him taken down a peg. 

Now for the first time there rose distinctly in 
Theron’s mind that casual allusion which Father 
Forbes had made to the Turanians. He recalled, 
too, his momentary feeling of mortification at not 
knowing who the Turanians were, at the time. 
Possibly, if he had probed this matter more 
deeply, now as he walked and pondered in the 
95 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


iittle living-room, he might have traced the whole 
of the afternoon’s mental experiences to that 
chance remark of the Romish priest. But this 
speculation did not detain him. He mused in- 
stead upon the splendid library Father Forbes 
must have. 

“ Well, how does the book come on ? Have 
you got to ( my lady Keturah ’ yet ? ’ ” 

It was Alice who spoke, opening the door from 
the kitchen, and putting in her head with a pre- 
tence of great and solemn caution, but with a cor- 
recting twinkle in her eyes. 

“ I have n’t got to anybody yet,” answered 
Theron, absently. “These big things must be 
approached slowly.” 

“ Come out to supper,, then* while the beans are 
hot,” said Alice. 

The young minister sat through this other meal, 
again in deep abstraction. His wife pursued her 
little pleasantry about Keturah, the second wife, 
urging him with mock gravity to scold her roundly 
for daring to usurp Sarah’s place, but Theron 
scarcely heard her, and said next to nothing. He 
ate sparingly, and fidgeted in his seat, waiting with 
obvious impatience for the finish of the meal. At 
last he rose abruptly. 

« I ’ve got a call to make, — something with 
reference to the book,” he said. “ I ’ll run out 
now, I think, before it gets dark.” 

He put on his hat, and strode out of the house 

y6 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


as if his errand was of the utmost urgency. Once 
upon the street, however, his pace slackened. 
There was still a good deal of daylight outside, 
and he loitered aimlessly about, walking with bowed 
head and hands clasped behind him, until dusk 
fell. Then he squared his shoulders, and started 
straight as the crow flies toward the residence of 
Father Forbes. 


CHAPTER VII 


The new Catholic church was the largest and 
most imposing public building in Octavius. Even 
in its unfinished condition, with a bald roofing of 
weather-beaten boards marking on the stunted 
tower the place where a spire was to begin later 
on, it dwarfed every other edifice of the sort in 
the town, just as it put them all to shame in the 
matter of the throngs it drew, rain or shine, to its 
services. 

These facts had not heretofore been a source of 
satisfaction to the Rev. Theron Ware. He had 
even alluded to the subject in terms which gave his 
wife the impression that he actively deplored the 
strength and size of the Catholic denomination in 
this new home of theirs, and was troubled in his 
mind about Rome generally. But this evening he 
walked along the extended side of the big struc- 
ture, which occupied nearly half the block, and 
then, turning the corner, passed in review its wide- 
doored, looming front, without any hostile emo- 
tions whatever. In the gathering dusk it seemed 
more massive than ever before, but he found him- 
self only passively considering the odd statement 
he had heard that all Catholic Church property 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


was deeded absolutely in the name of the Bishop 
of the diocese. 

Only a narrow passage-way separated the church 
from the pastorate, a fine new brick residence stand- 
ing flush upon the street. Theron mounted the 
steps, and looked about for a bell-pull. Search 
revealed instead a little ivory button set in a ring 
of metal work. He picked at this for a time with 
his finger-nail, before he made out the injunction, 
printed across it, to push. Of course ! how stupid 
of him ! This was one of those electric bells he 
had heard so much of, but which had not as yet 
made their way to the class of homes he knew. 
For custodians of a mediaeval superstition and 
fanaticism, the Catholic clergy seemed very much 
up to d^te. This bell made him feel rather more 
a countryman than ever. 

The door was opened by a tall gaunt woman, 
who stood in black relief against the radiance of 
the hall-way while Theron, choosing his words 
with some diffidence, asked if the Rev. Mr. 
Forbes was in. 

“ He is,” came the hush-voiced answer. “ He ’s 

dinner, though.” 

It took the young minister a second or two to 
bring into association in his mind this evening 
hour and this midday meal. Then he began to 
say that he would call again, — it was nothing 
special, — but the woman suddenly cut him short 
by throwing the door wide open. 

99 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ It ’s Mr. Ware, is it not?” she asked, in a 
greatly altered tone. “ Sure, he ’d not have you 
go away. Come inside — do, sir ! — I ’ll tell 
him.” 

Theron, with a dumb show of reluctance, crossed 
the threshold. Fie noted now that the woman, 
who had bustled down the hall on her errand, was 
gray-haired and incredibly ugly, with a dark sour 
face, glowering black eyes, and a twisted mouth. 
Then he saw that he was not alone in the hall- way. 
Three men and two women, all poorly clad and 
obviously working people, were seated in meek 
silence on a bench beyond the hat-rack. They 
glanced up at him for an instant, then resumed 
their patient study of the linoleum pattern on the 
floor at their feet. 

“ And will you kindly step in, sir?” the elderly 
Gorgon had returned to ask. She led Mr. Ware 
along the hall-way to a door near the end, and 
opened it for him to pass before her. 

He entered a room in which for the moment he 
could see nothing but a central glare of dazzling 
light beating down from a great shaded lamp upon 
a circular patch of white table linen. Inside this 
ring of illumination points of fire sparkled from 
silver and porcelain, and two bars of burning 
crimson tracked across the cloth in reflection from 
tall glasses filled with wine. The rest of the room 
was vague darkness, but the gloom seemed satu- 
rated with novel aromatic odors, the appetizing 
\oo 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

scent of which bore clear relation to what Theron’s 
blinking eyes rested upon. 

He was able now to discern two figures at the 
table, outside the glowing circle of the lamp. 
They had both risen, and one came toward him 
with cordial celerity, holding out a white plump 
hand in greeting. He took this proffered hand 
rather limply, not wholly sure in the half-light that 
this really was Father Forbes, and began once 
more that everlasting apology to which he seemed 
doomed in the presence of the priest. It was 
broken abruptly off by the other’s protesting 
laughter. 

“ My dear Mr. Ware, I beg of you,” the priest 
urged, chuckling with hospitable mirth, “ don’t, 
don’t apologize ! I give you my word, nothing in 
the world could have pleased us better than your 
joining us here to-night. It was quite dramatic, 
your coming in as you did. We were speaking of 
you at that very moment. Oh, I forgot — let me 
make you acquainted with my friend — my very 
particular friend, Dr. Ledsmar. Let me take 
your hat ; pray draw up a chair. Maggie will 
have a place laid for you in a minute.” 

“ Oh, I assure you — I could n’t think of it — 
I ’ve just eaten my — my — dinner,” expostulated 
Theron. He murmured more inarticulate remon- 
strances a moment later, when the grim old 
domestic appeared with plates, serviette, and table- 
ware for his use, but she went on spreading them 

IOI 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


before him as if she heard nothing. Thus com- 
mitted against a decent show of resistance, the 
young minister did eat a little here and there oi 
what was set before him, and was human enough 
to regret frankly that he could not eat more. It 
seemed to him very remarkable cookery, trans- 
figuring so simple a thing as a steak, for example, 
quite out of recognition, and investing the humble 
potato with a charm he had never dreamed of. 
He wondered from time to time if it would be 
polite to ask how the potatoes were cooked, so 
that he might tell Alice. 

The conversation at the table was not continu- 
ous, or even enlivened. After the lapses into 
silence became marked, Theron began to suspect 
that his refusal to drink wine had annoyed them, — 
the more so as he had drenched a large section of 
table-cloth in his efforts to manipulate a siphon 
instead. He was greatly relieved, therefore, when 
Father Forbes explained in an incidental way that 
Dr. Ledsmar and he customarily ate their meals 
almost without a word. 

“ It ’s a philosophic fad of his,” the priest went 
on smilingly, “ and I have fallen in with it for the 
sake of a quiet life ; so that when we do have 
company, — that is to say, once in a blue moon, ■ — 
we display no manners to speak of.” 

“ I had always supposed — that is, I ’ve always 
heard — that it was more healthful to talk at 
meals,” said Theron. “ Of course — what I mean 
102 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

is — I took it for granted all physicians thought 
so.” 

Dr. Ledsmar laughed. “That depends so 
much upon the quality of the meals ! ” he re- 
marked, holding his glass up to the light. 

He seemed a man of middle age and an equable 
disposition. Theron, stealing stray glances at him 
around the lampshade, saw most distinctly of all a 
broad, impressive dome of skull, which, though 
obviously the result of baldness, gave the effect of 
quite belonging to the face. There were gold- 
rimmed spectacles, through which shone now and 
again the vivid sparkle of sharp, alert eyes, and 
there was a nose of some sort not easy to classify, 
at once long and thick. The rest was thin hair 
and short round beard, mouse-colored where the 
light caught them, but losing their outlines in the 
shadows of the background. Theron had not 
heard of him among the physicians of Octavius. 
He wondered if he might not be a doctor of 
something else than medicine, and decided upon 
venturing the question. 

“ Oh, yes, it is medicine,” replied Ledsmar. “ I 
am a doctor three or four times over, so far as 
parchments can make one. In some other re- 
spects, though, I should think I am probably less of 
a doctor than anybody else now living. I have n’t 
practised — that is, regularly — for many years, 
and I take no interest whatever in keeping abreast 
of what the profession regards as its progress. I 
103 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


know nothing beyond what was being taught in 
the sixties, and that I am glad to say I have 
mostly forgotten.” 

“ Dear me!” said Theron. “ I had always 
supposed that Science was the most engrossing of 
pursuits, — that once a man took it up he never 
left it.” 

“But that would imply a connection between 
Science and Medicine ! ” commented the doctor. 
“ My dear sir, they are not even on speaking 
terms.” 

“ Shall we go upstairs? ” put in the priest, rising 
from his chair. “ It will be more comfortable to 
have our coffee there, — unless indeed, Mr. Ware, 
tobacco is unpleasant to you ? ” 

“ Oh, my, no ! ” the young minister exclaimed, 
eager to free himself from the suggestion of being 
a kill-joy. “I don’t smoke myself ; but I am 
very fond of the odor, I assure you.” 

Father Forbes led the way out. It could be 
seen now that he wore a long house-gown of black 
silk, skilfully moulded to his erect, shapely, and 
rounded form. Though he carried this with the 
natural grace of a proud and beautiful belle, there 
was no hint of the feminine in his bearing, or in 
the contour of his pale, firm-set, handsome face. 
As he moved through the hall -way, the five people 
whom Theron had seen waiting rose from their 
bench, and two of the women began in humble 
murmurs, “ If you please, Father,” and “ Good* 
104 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


evening to your Riverence ; ” but the priest merely 
nodded and passed on up the staircase, followed 
by his guests. The people sat down on their 
bench again. 

A few minutes later, reclining at his ease in a 
huge low chair, and feeling himself unaccountably 
at home in the most luxuriously appointed and 
delightful little room he had ever seen, the Rev. 
Theron Ware sipped his unaccustomed coffee and 
embarked upon an explanation of his errand. 
Somehow the very profusion of scholarly symbols 
about him — the great dark rows of encased and 
crowded book-shelves rising to the ceiling, the 
classical engravings upon the wall, the revolving 
book-case, the reading-stand, the mass of littered 
magazines, reviews, and papers at either end of 
the costly and elaborate writing-desk — seemed to 
make it the easier for him to explain without re- 
proach that he needed information about Abram. 
He told them quite in detail the story of his book. 

The two others sat watching him through a faint 
haze of scented smoke, with polite encouragement 
on their faces. Father Forbes took the added 
trouble to nod understanding^ at the various 
points of the narrative, and when it was finished 
gave one of his little approving chuckles. 

“ This skirts very closely upon sorcery,” he said 
smilingly. “Do you know, there is perhaps not 
another man in the country who knows Assyriology 
so thoroughly as our friend here, Dr. Ledsmar.’* 
105 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ That ’s putting it too strong,” remarked the 
doctor. “ I only follow at a distance, — a year or 
two behind. But I daresay I can help you. You 
are quite welcome to anything I have : my books 
cover the ground pretty well up to last year. 
Delitzsch is very interesting ; but Baudissin’s ‘ Stu- 
dien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte * would 
come closer to what you need. There are several 
other important Germans, — Schrader, Bunsen, 
Duncker, Hommel, and so on.” 

“ Unluckily I — I don’t read German readily,” 
Theron explained with diffidence. 

“ That ’s a pity,” said the doctor, “ because 
they do the best work, — not only in this field, but 
in most others. And they do so much that the 
mass defies translation. Well, the best thing out- 
side of German of course is Sayce. I daresay you 
know him, though.” 

The Rev. Mr. Ware shook his head mournfully. 
“ I don’t seem to know any one,” he murmured. 

The others exchanged glances. 

“ But if I may ask, Mr. Ware,” pursued the 
doctor, regarding their guest with interest through 
his spectacles, “ why do you specially hit upon 
Abraham ? He is full of difficulties, — enough, 
just now, at any rate, to warn off* the bravest 
scholar. Why not take something easier ? ” 

Theron had recovered something of his confi- 
dence. “ Oh, no,” he said, “ that is just what at- 
tracts me to Abraham. I like the complexities 
Jo6 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and contradictions in his character. Take for 
instance all that strange and picturesque episode 
of Hagar : see the splendid contrast between the 
craft and commercial guile of his dealings in Egypt 
and with Abimelech, and the simple, straightfor- 
ward godliness of his later years. No, all those 
difficulties only attract me. Do you happen to 
know — of course you would know — do those 
German books, or the others, give anywhere any 
additional details of the man himself and his say- 
ings and doings, — little things which help, you 
know, to round out one’s conception of the in- 
dividual? ” 

Again the priest and the doctor stole a furtive 
glance across the young minister’s head. It was 
Father Forbes who replied. 

“ I fear that you are taking our friend Abraham 
too literally, Mr. Ware,” he said, in that gentle 
semblance of paternal tones which seemed to go 
so well with his gown. “ Modern research, you 
know, quite wipes him out of existence as an indi- 
vidual. The word ‘ Abram ’ is merely an eponym, — 
it means * exalted father.’ Practically all the names 
in the Genesis chronologies are what we call epony- 
mous. Abram is not a person at all : he is a 
tribe, a sept, a clan. In the same way, Shem is 
not intended for a man ; it is the name of a great 
division of the human race. Heber is simply the 
throwing back into allegorical substance, so to 
speak, of the Hebrews; Heth of the Hittites; 
Asshur of Assyria.” 107 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ But this is something very new, this theory, 
is n’t it? ” queried Theron. 

The priest smiled and shook his head. “ Bless 
you, no ! My dear sir, there is nothing new. 
Epicurus and Lucretius outlined the whole Dar- 
winian theory more than two thousand years ago. 
As for this eponym thing, why Saint Augustine 
called attention to it fifteen hundred years ago. In 
his ‘ De Civitate Dei,’ he expressly says of these 
genealogical names, ‘ gentes non homines ; ’ that 
is, 4 peoples, not persons.* It was as obvious to 
him — as much a commonplace of knowledge — 
as it was to Ezekiel eight hundred years before 
him.” 

“ It seems passing strange that we should not 
know it now, then,” commented Theron ; “ I 
mean, that everybody should n’t know it.” 

Father Forbes gave a little purring chuckle. 
“Ah, there we get upon contentious ground,” he 
remarked. “ Why should ‘ everybody ’ be sup- 
posed to know anything at all ? What business is 
it of ‘ everybody’s ’ to know things ? The earth 
was just as round in the days when people sup- 
posed it to be flat, as it is now. So the truth re- 
mains always the truth, even though you give a 
charter to ten hundred thousand separate num- 
skulls to examine it by the light of their private 
judgment, and report that it is as many different 
varieties of something else. But of course that 
whole question of private judgment versus author- 
106 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

ity is No-Man’s- Land for us. We were speaking 
of eponyms.” 

“Yes,” said Theron; “it is very interesting.” 

“ There is a curious phase of the subject which 
has n’t been worked out much,” continued the 
priest. “ Probably the Germans will get at that 
too, sometime. They are doing the best Irish 
work in other fields, as it is. I spoke of Heber 
and Heth, in Genesis, as meaning the Hebrews 
and the Hittites. Now my own people, the Irish, 
have far more ancient legends and traditions than 
any other nation west of Athens ; and you find in 
their myth of the Milesian invasion and conquest 
two principal leaders called Heber and Ith, or 
Heth. That is supposed to be comparatively 
modern, — about the time of Solomon’s Temple. 
But these independent Irish myths go back to the 
fall of the Tower of Babel, and they have there an 
ancestor, grandson of Japhet, named Fenius Farsa, 
and they ascribe to him the invention of the alpha- 
bet. They took their ancient name of Feine, the 
modern Fenian, from him. Oddly enough, that 
is the name which the Romans knew the Phoeni- 
cians by, and to them also is ascribed the inven- 
tion of the alphabet. The Irish have a holy salmon 
of knowledge, just like the Chaldean man-fish. 
The Druids’ tree-worship is identical with that of 
the Chaldeans, — those pagan groves, you know, 
which the Jews were always being punished for 
building. You see, there is nothing new. Every- 
x io9 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

thing is built on the ruins of something else. Just 
as the material earth is made up of countless bil- 
lions of dead men’s bones, so the mental world is 
all alive with the ghosts of dead men’s thoughts 
and beliefs, the wraiths of dead races’ faiths and 
imaginings.” 

Father Forbes paused, then added with a twinkle 
in his eye : “ That peroration is from an old ser- 
mon of mine, in the days when I used to preach. 
I remember rather liking it, at the time.” 

“But you still preach?” asked the Rev. Mr. 
Ware, with lifted brows. 

“ No ! no more ! I only talk now and again,” 
answered the priest, with what seemed a suggestion 
of curtness. He made haste to take the con- 
versation back again. “ The names of these dead- 
and-gone things are singularly pertinacious, though. 
They survive indefinitely. Take the modern name 
Marmaduke, for example. It strikes one as pecu- 
liarly modern, up-to-date, doesn’t it? Well, it is 
the oldest name on earth, — thousands of years 
older than Adam. It is the ancient Chaldean 
Meridug, or Merodach. He was the young god 
who interceded continually between the angry, 
omnipotent Ea, his father, and the humble and 
unhappy Damkina, or Earth, who was his mother. 
This is interesting from another point of view, 
because this Merodach or Marmaduke is, so far 
as we can see now, the original prototype of our 
‘divine intermediary’ idea. I daresay, though, 
no 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


that if we could go back still other scores of 
centuries, we should find whole receding series 
of types of this Christ-myth of ours.” 

Theron Ware sat upright at the fall of these 
words, and flung a swift, startled look about the 
room, — the instinctive glance of a man unex- 
pectedly confronted with peril, and casting des- 
perately about for means of defence and escape. 
For the instant his mind was aflame with this 
vivid impression, — that he was among sinister 
enemies, at the mercy of criminals. He half 
rose under the impelling stress of this feeling, 
with the sweat standing on his brow, and his 
jaw dropped in a scared and bewildered stare. 

Then, quite as suddenly, the sense of shock 
was gone; and it was as if nothing at all had 
happened. He drew a long breath, took another 
sip of his coffee, and found himself all at once 
reflecting almost pleasurably upon the charm of 
contact with really educated people. He leaned 
back in the big chair again, and smiled to show 
these men of the world how much at his ease he 
was. It required an effort, he discovered, but he 
made it bravely, and hoped he was succeeding. 

“ It has n’t been in my power to at all lay hold 
of what the world keeps on learning nowadays 
about its babyhood,” he said. “ All I have done 
is to try to preserve an open mind, and to main- 
tain my faith that the more we know, the nearer 
we shall approach the Throne.” 

hi , 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Dr. Ledsmar abruptly scuffled his feet on the 
floor, and took out his watch. “ I ’m afraid — " 
he began. 

“ No, no ! There ’s plenty of time," remarked 
the priest, with his soft half-smile and purring 
tones. “ You finish your cigar here with Mr. Ware, 
and excuse me while I run down and get rid of 
the people in the hall." 

Father Forbes tossed his cigar- end into the 
fender. Then he took from the mantel a strange 
three-cornered black-velvet cap, with a dangling 
silk tassel at the side, put it on his head, and went 
out. 

Theron, being left alone with the doctor, hardly 
knew what to do or say. He took up a paper from 
the floor beside him, but realized that it would be 
impolite to go farther, and laid it on his knee. 
Some trace of that earlier momentary feeling that 
he was in hostile hands came back, and worried 
him. He lifted himself upright in the chair, 
and then became conscious that what really dis- 
turbed him was the fact that Dr. Ledsmar had 
turned in his seat, crossed his legs, and was 
contemplating him with a gravely concentrated 
| scrutiny through his spectacles, 
j This uncomfortable gaze kept itself up a long 
way beyond the point of good manners ; but the 
doctor seemed not to mind that at all. 


CHAPTER VIII 


When Dr. Ledsmar finally spoke, it was in a 
kindlier tone than the young minister had looked 
for. “ I had half a notion of going to hear 
you preach the other evening,” he said ; “ but at 
the last minute I backed out. I daresay I shall 
pluck up the courage, sooner or later, and really 
go. It must be fully twenty years since I last 
heard a sermon, and I had supposed that that 
would suffice for the rest of my life. But they 
tell me that you are worth while ; and, for some 
reason or other, I find myself curious on the 
subject.” 

Involved and dubious though the compliment 
might be, Theron felt himself flushing with satis- 
faction. He nodded his acknowledgment, and 

I changed the topic. 

“ I was surprised to hear Father Forbes say that 
he did not preach,” he remarked. 

1 “ Why should he ? ” asked the doctor, indiffer- 
ently. “I suppose he hasn’t more than fifteen 
parishioners in a thousand who would understand 
him if he did, and of these probably twelve would 
join in a complaint to his Bishop about the hetero* 
* 11$ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


dox tone of his sermon. There is no point in his 
going to all that pains, merely to incur that risk. 
Nobody wants him to preach, and he has reached 
an age where personal vanity no longer tempts him 
to do so. What is wanted of him is that he should 
be the paternal, ceremonial, authoritative head and 
centre of his flock, adviser, monitor, overseer, elder 
brother, friend, patron, seigneur, — whatever you 
like, — everything except a bore. They draw the 
line at that. You see how diametrically opposed 
this Catholic point of view is to the Protestant.” 

“ The difference does seem extremely curious to 
me,” said Theron. “ Now, those people in the 
hall — ” 

“Go on,” put in the doctor, as the other 
faltered hesitatingly. “I know what you were 
going to say. It struck you as odd that he 
should let them wait on the bench there, while 
he came up here to smoke.” 

Theron smiled faintly. “I was thinking that 
my — my parishioners would n’t have taken it so 
quietly. But of course — it is all so different ! ” 

“ As chalk from cheese ! ” said Dr. Ledsmar, 
lighting a fresh cigar. “ I daresay every one you 
saw there had come either to take the pledge, or 
see to it that one of the others took it. That is 
the chief industry in the hall, so far as I have ob- 
served. Now discipline is an important element 
in the machinery here. Coming to take the 
pledge implies that you have been drunk and are 
114 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


now ashamed. Both states have their values, but 
they are opposed. Sitting on that bench tends to 
develop penitence to the prejudice of alcoholism- 
But at no stage would it ever occur to the occu- 
pant of the bench that he was the best judge of 
how long he was to sit there, or that his priest 
should interrupt his dinner or general personal 
routine, in order to administer that pledge. 
Now, I daresay you have no people at all com- 
ing to ‘ swear off.* ” 

The Rev. Mr. Ware shook his head. “ No ; if 
a man with us got as bad as all that, he would n’t 
come near the church at all. He ’d simply drop 
out, and there would be an end to it.” 

" Quite so,” interjected the doctor. “ That is 
the voluntary system. But these fellows can't 
drop out. There ’s no bottom to the Catholic 
Church. Everything that ’s in, stays in. If you don’t 
mind my saying so — of course I view you all im- 
partially from the outside — but it seems logical to 
me that a church should exist for those who need 
its help, and not for those who by their own pro- 
fession are so good already that it is they who help 
the church. Now, you turn a man out of your 
church who behaves badly: that must be on the 
theory that his remaining in would injure the 
church, and that in turn involves the idea that it 
is the excellent character of the parishioners which 
imparts virtue to the church. The Catholics’ con- 
ception, you see, is quite the converse. Such vir- 
XI 5 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


tue as they keep in stock is on tap, so to speak 
here in the church itself, and the parishioners 
come and get some for themselves according to 
their need for it. Some come every day, some 
only once a year, some perhaps never between 
their baptism and their funeral. But they all have 
a right here, the professional burglar every whit as 
much as the speckless saint. The only stipulation 
is that they oughtn’t to come under false pre- 
tences : the burglar is in honor bound not to pass 
himself off to his priest as the saint. But that is 
merely a moral obligation, established in the bur- 
glar’s own interest. It does him no good to come 
unless he feels that he is playing the rules of 
the game, and one of these is confession. If he 
cheats there, he knows that he is cheating nobody 
but himself, and might much better have stopped 
away altogether.” 

Theron nodded his head comprehendingly. 
He had a great many views about the Romanish 
rite of confession which did not at all square with 
this statement of the case, but this did not seem a 
specially fit time for bringing them forth. There 
was indeed a sense of languid repletion in his 
mind, as if it had been overfed and wanted to lie 
down for awhile. He contented himself with nod- 
ding again, and murmuring reflectively, “Yes, it 
is all strangely different.” 

His tone was an invitation to silence ; and the 
doctor turned his attention to the cigar, studying 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


its ash for a minute with an air of deep medita- 
tion, and then solemnly blowing out a slow series 
of smoke-rings. Theron watched him with an in- 
dolent, placid eye, wondering lazily if it was, after 
all, so very pleasant to smoke. 

There fell upon this silence — with a softness 
so delicate that it came almost like a progression 
in the hush — the sound of sweet music. For a 
little, strain and source were alike indefinite, — an 
impalpable setting to harmony of the mellowed 
light, the perfumed opalescence of the air, the lux- 
ury and charm of the room. Then it rose as by a 
sweeping curve of beauty, into a firm, calm, severe 
melody, delicious to the ear, but as cold in the 
mind’s vision as moonlit sculpture. It went on 
upward with stately collectedness of power, till the 
atmosphere seemed all alive with the trembling 
consciousness of the presence of lofty souls, sternly 
pure and pitilessly great. 

Theron found himself moved as he had never 
been before. He almost resented the discovery, 
when it was presented to him by the prosaic, 
mechanical side of his brain, that he was listening 
to organ-music, and that it came through the open 
window from the church close by. He would fain 
have reclined in his chair and closed his eyes, and 
saturated himself with the uttermost fulness of the 
sensation. Yet, in absurd despite of himself, he 
rose and moved over to the window. 

Only a narrow alley separated the pastorate from 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the church ; Mr. Ware could have touched with a 
walking-stick the opposite wall. Directly facing 
him was the arched and mullioned top of a great 
window. A dim light from within shone through 
the more translucent portions of the glass below, 
throwing out faint little bars of party-colored radi- 
ance upon the blackness of the deep passage-way. 
He could vaguely trace by these the outlines of 
some sort of picture on the window. There were 
human figures in it, and — yes — up here in the 
centre, nearest him, was a woman’s head. There 
was a halo about it, engirdling rich, flowing waves 
of reddish hair, the lights in which glowed like 
flame. The face itself was barely distinguishable, 
but its half-suggested form raised a curious sense 
of resemblance to some other face. He looked at 
it closely, blankly, the noble music throbbing 
through his brain meanwhile. 

“ It ’s that Madden girl ! ” he suddenly heard a 
voice say by his side. Dr. Ledsmar had followed 
him to the window, and was close at his shoulder. 

Theron’s thoughts were upon the puzzling 
shadowed lineaments on the stained glass. He 
saw now in a flash the resemblance which had 
baffled him. " It is like her, of course,” he said. 

“ Yes, unfortunately, it is just like her,” replied 
the doctor, with a hostile note in his voice. 
“ Whenever I am dining here, she always goes in 
and kicks up that racket. She knows I hate it.” 

“ Oh, you mean that it is she who is playing,** 
tiS 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


remarked Theron. “ I thought you referred to — 
at least — I was thinking of — ” 

His sentence died off in inconsequence. He 
had a feeling that he did not want to talk with the 
doctor about the stained-glass likeness. The music 
had sunk away now into fragmentary and uncon- 
nected passages, broken here and there by abrupt 
stops. Dr. Ledsmar stretched an arm out past 
him and shut the window. “ Let ’s hear as little 
of the row as we can,” he said, and the two went 
back to their chairs. 

“Pardon me for the question,” the Rev. Mr. 
Ware said, after a pause which began to affect 
him as constrained, “ but something you said 
about dining — you don’t live here, then? In 
the house, I mean ? ” 

The doctor laughed, — a characteristically abrupt, 
dry little laugh, which struck Theron at once as 
bearing a sort of black-sheep relationship to the 
priest’s habitual chuckle. “ That must have been 
puzzling you no end,” he said, — " that notion that 
the pastorate kept a devil’s advocate on the prem- 
ises. No, Mr. Ware, I don’t live here. I inhabit 
a house of my own, — you may have seen it, — an 
old-fashioned place up beyond the race-course, 
with a sort of tower at the back, and a big garden. 
But I dine here three or four times a week. It is 
an old arrangement of ours. Vincent and I have 
been friends for many years now. We are quite 
alone in the world, we two, — much to our mutual 

119 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


satisfaction. You must come up and see me some 
time ; come up and have a look over the books 
we were speaking of.” 

“I am much obliged,” said Theron, without 
enthusiasm. The thought of the doctor by him- 
self did not attract him greatly. 

The reservation in his tone seemed to interest 
the doctor. “ I suppose you are the first man I 
have asked in a dozen years,” he remarked, frankly 
willing that the young minister should appreciate 
the favor extended him. “ It must be fully that 
since anybody but Vincent Forbes has been under 
my roof ; that is, of my own species, I mean.” 

" You live there quite alone,” commented 
Theron. 

“ Quite — with my dogs and cats and lizards — 
and my Chinaman. I must n’t forget him.” The 
doctor noted the inquiry in the other’s lifted 
brows, and smilingly explained. “ He is my soli- 
tary servant. Possibly he might not appeal to you 
much ; but I can assure you he used to interest 
Octavius a great deal when I first brought him 
here, ten years ago or so. He afforded occupa- 
tion for all the idle boys in the village for a twelve- 
month at least. They used to lie in wait for him 
all day long, with stones or horse-chestnuts or 
snowballs, according to the season. The Irish- 
men from the wagon-works nearly killed him once 
or twice, but he patiently lived it all down. The 
Chinaman has the patience to live everything 

J20^ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


down, — the Caucasian races included. He will 
see us all to bed, will that gentleman with the 
pigtail 1 ” 

The music over in the church had lifted itself 
again into form and sequence, and defied the 
closed window. If anything, it was louder than 
before, and the sonorous roar of the bass-pedals 
seemed to be shaking the very walls. It was 
something with a big-lunged, exultant, triumphing 
swing in it, — something which ought to have been 
sung on the battlefield at the close of day by the 
whole jubilant army of victors. It was impossible 
to pretend not to be listening to it ; but the doctor 
submitted with an obvious scowl, and bit off the 
tip of his third cigar with an annoyed air. 

“You don’t seem to care much for music,” 
suggested Mr. Ware, when a lull came. 

Dr. Ledsmar looked up, lighted match in hand. 
“Say musicians!” he growled. “Has it ever 
occurred to you,” he went on, between puffs at 
the flame, “ that the only animals who make the 
noises we call music are of the bird family, — a de- 
based offshoot of the reptilian creation, — the very 
lowest types of the vertebrata now in existence? 
I insist upon the parallel among humans. I have 
in my time, sir, had considerable opportunities 
for studying close at hand the various orders of 
mammalia who devote themselves to what they 
describe as the arts. It may sound a harsh judg- 
ment, but I am convinced that musicians stand 
121 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

on the very bottom rung of the ladder in the sub* 
cellar of human intelligence,— -even lower than 
painters and actors.” 

This seemed such unqualified nonsense to the 
Rev. Mr. Ware that he offered no comment what- 
ever upon it. He tried instead to divert his 
thoughts to the stormy strains which rolled in 
through the vibrating brickwork, and to picture 
to himself the large, capable figure of Miss Madden 
seated in the half-light at the organ-board, sway- 
ing to and fro in a splendid ecstasy of power as 
she evoked at will this superb and ordered uproar. 
But the doctor broke insistently in upon his 
musings. 

“ All art, so-called, is decay,” he said, raising 
his voice. “ When a race begins to brood on the 
beautiful, — so-called, — it is a sign of rot, of get- 
ting ready to fall from the tree. Take the Jews, — 
those marvellous old fellows, — who were never 
more than a handful, yet have imposed the rule 
of their ideas and their gods upon us for fifteen 
hundred years. Why? They were forbidden by 
their most fundamental law to make sculptures or 
pictures. That was at a time when the Egyptians, 
when the Assyrians, and other Semites, were run- 
ning to artistic riot. Every great museum in the 
world now has whole floors devoted to statues 
from the Nile, and marvellous carvings from the 
palaces of Sargon and Assurbanipal. You can get 
the artistic remains of the Jews during that whole 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


period into a child’s wheelbarrow. They had the 
sense and strength to penalize art ; they alone sur- 
vived. They saw the Egyptians go, the Assyrians 
go, the Greeks go, the late Romans go, the Moors 
in Spain go, — all the artistic peoples perish. They 
remained triumphing over all. Now at last their 
long-belated apogee is here; their decline is at 
hand. I am told that in this present generation 
in Europe the Jews are producing a great lot of 
young painters and sculptors and actors, just as 
for a century they have been producing famous 
composers and musicians. That means the end 
of the Jews ! ” 

"What! have you only got as far as that?* 
came the welcome interruption of a cheery voice. 
Father Forbes had entered the room, and stood 
looking down with a whimsical twinkle in his eye 
from one to the other of his guests. 

“ You must have been taken over the ground at 
a very slow pace, Mr. Ware,” he continued, chuck- 
ling softly, “ to have arrived merely at the collapse 
of the New Jerusalem. I fancied I had given him 
time enough to bring you straight up to the end 
of all of us, with that Chinaman of his gently slap- 
ping our graves with his pigtail. That ’s where the 
doctor always winds up, if he 's allowed to run his 
course.” 

" It has all been very interesting, extremely so, 
I assure you,” faltered Theron. It had become 
suddenly apparent to him that he desired nothing 

123 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


so much as to make his escape, — that he had in- 
deed only been waiting for the host’s return to 
do so. 

He rose at this, and explained that he must be 
going. No special effort being put forth to re- 
strain him, he presently made his way out, Father 
Forbes hospitably following him down to the door, 
and putting a very gracious cordiality into his 
adieux. 

The night was warm and black. Theron stood 
still in it the moment the pastorate door had closed ; 
the sudden darkness was so thick that it was as if 
he had closed his eyes. His dominant sensation 
was of a deep relief and rest after some undue 
fatigue. It crossed his mind that drunken men 
probably felt like that as they leaned against things 
on their way home. He was affected himself, he 
saw, by the weariness and half- nausea following a 
mental intoxication. The conceit pleased him, 
and he smiled to himself as he turned and took the 
first homeward steps. It must be growing late, 
he thought. Alice would be wondering as she 
waited. 

There was a street lamp at the comer, and as 
he walked toward it he noted all at once that his 
feet were keeping step to the movement of the 
music proceeding from the organ within the church, 
— a vaguely processional air, marked enough in 
measure, but still with a dreamy effect. It be- 
came a pleasure to identify his progress with the 
124 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


quaint rhythm of sound as he sauntered along. 
He discovered, as he neared the light, that he 
was instinctively stepping over the seams in the 
flagstone sidewalk as he had done as a boy. He 
smiled again at this. There was something ex- 
ceptionally juvenile and buoyant about his mood, 
now that he examined it. He set it down as a 
reaction from that doctor’s extravagant and incen- 
diary talk. One thing was certain, — he would 
never be caught up at that house beyond the race- 
course, with its reptiles and its Chinaman. Should 
he ever even go to the pastorate again? He de- 
cided not to quite definitely answer that in the 
negative, but as he felt now, the chances were all 
against it. 

Turning the corner, and walking off into the 
shadows along the side of the huge church build- 
ing, Theron noted, almost at the end of the edifice, 
a small door, — the entrance to a porch coming 
out to the sidewalk, — which stood wide open. A 
thin, pale, vertical line of light showed that the 
inner door, too, was ajar. 

Through this wee aperture the organ-music, re- 
duced and mellowed by distance, came to him 
again with that same curious, intimate, personal 
relation which had so moved him at the start, 
before the doctor closed the window. It was as 
if it was being played for him alone. 

He paused for a doubting minute or two, with 
bowed head, listening to the exquisite harmony 
1 25 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


which floated out to caress and soothe and enfold 
him. There was no spiritual, or at least pious, 
effect in it now. He fancied that it must be 
secular music, or, if not, then something adapted 
to marriage ceremonies, — rich, vivid, passionate, a 
celebration of beauty and the glory of possession, 
with its ruling note of joy only heightened by soft, 
wooing interludes, and here and there the tremor 
of a fond, timid little sob. 

Theron turned away irresolutely, half frightened 
at the undreamt-of impression this music was mak- 
ing upon him. Then, all at once, he wheeled and 
stepped boldly into the porch, pushing the inner 
door open and hearing it rustle against its leathern 
frame as it swung to behind him. 

He had never been inside a Catholic church 
before. 


CHAPTER IX 


Jeremiah Madden was supposed to be probably 
the richest man in Octavius. There was no doubt 
at all about his being its least pretentious citizen. 

The huge and ornate modern mansion which he 
had built, putting to shame every other house in 
the place, gave an effect of ostentation to the 
Maddens as a family ; it seemed only to accen- 
tuate the air of humility which enveloped Jeremiah 
as with a garment. Everybody knew some version 
of the many tales afloat which, in a kindly spirit, 
illustrated the incongruity between him and his 
splendid habitation. Some had it that he slept in 
the shed. Others told whimsical stories of his 
sitting alone in the kitchen evenings, smoking his 
old clay pipe, and sorrowing because the second 
Mrs. Madden would not suffer the pigs and 
chickens to come in and bear him company. But 
no matter how comic the exaggeration, these 
legends were invariably amiable. It lay in no 
man’s mouth to speak harshly of Jeremiah 
Madden. 

He had been born a Connemara peasant, and 
he would die one. When he was ten years old he 
had seen some of his own family, and most of his 
127 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


neighbors, starve to death. He could remember 
looking at the stiffened figure of a woman stretched 
on the stones by the roadside, with the green stain 
of nettles on her white lips. A girl five years or 
so older than himself, also a Madden and distantly 
related, had started in despair off across the moun- 
tains to the town where it was said the poor-law 
officers were dealing out food. He could recall 
her coming back next day, wild-eyed with hunger 
and the fever ; the officers had refused her relief 
because her bare legs were not wholly shrunken to 
the bone. “ While there ’s a calf on the shank, 
there ’s no starvation,” they had explained to her. 
The girl died without profiting by this official 
apothegm. The boy found it burned ineffaceably 
upon his brain. Now, after a lapse of more than 
forty years, it seemed the thing that he remem- 
bered best about Ireland. 

He had drifted westward as an unconsidered, 
unresisting item in that vast flight of the famine 
years. Others whom he rubbed against in that 
melancholy exodus, and deemed of much greater 
promise than himself, had done badly. Somehow 
he dad well. He learned the wheelwright’s trade, 
and really that seemed all there was to tell. The 
rest had been calm and sequent progression, — 
steady employment as a journeyman first; then 
marriage and a house and lot ; the modest start 
as a master; the move to Octavius and cheap 
lumber ; the growth of his business, always marked 
.123 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


of late years stupendous, — all following naturally, 
easily, one thing out of another. Jeremiah en- 
countered the idea among his fellows, now and 
again, that he was entitled to feel proud of all this. 
He smiled to himself at the thought, and then 
sent a sigh after the smile. What was it all but 
empty and transient vanity? The score of other 
Connemara boys he had known — none very for- 
tunate, several broken tragically in prison or the 
gutter, nearly all now gone the way of flesh — were 
as good as he. He could not have it in his heart 
to take credit for his success ; it would have been 
like sneering over their poor graves. 

Jeremiah Madden was now fifty- three, — a little 
man of a reddened, weather-worn skin and a medi- 
tative, almost saddened, aspect. He had blue 
eyes, but his scanty iron-gray hair showed raven 
black in its shadows. The width and prominence 
of his cheek-bones dominated all one’s recollec- 
tions of his face. The long vertical upper-lip and 
irregular teeth made, in repose, an unshapely 
mouth; its smile, though, sweetened the whole 
countenance. He wore a fringe of stiff, steel- 
colored beard, passing from ear to ear under his 
chin. His week-day clothes were as simple as his 
workaday manners, fitting his short black pipe and 
his steadfast devotion to his business. On Sun- 
days he dressed with a certain rigor of respecta- 
bility, all in black, and laid aside tobacco, at least 
to the public view. He never missed going to the 
9 129 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

early Low Mass, quite alone. His family always 
came later, at the ten o’clock High Mass. 

There had been, at one time or another, a good 
many members of this family. Two wives had 
borne Jeremiah Madden a total of over a dozen 
children. Of these there survived now only two 
of the first Mrs. Madden’s offspring — Michael and 
Celia — and a son of the present wife, who had 
been baptized Terence, but called himself Theo- 
dore. This minority of the family inhabited the 
great new house on Main Street. Jeremiah went 
every Sunday afternoon by himself to kneel in the 
presence of the majority, there where they lay in 
Saint Agnes’ consecrated ground. If the weather 
was good, he generally extended his walk through 
the fields to an old deserted Catholic burial-field, 
which had been used only in the first years after 
the famine invasion, and now was clean forgotten. 
The old wagon-maker liked to look over the prim- 
itive, neglected stones which marked the graves of 
these earlier exiles. Fully half of the inscriptions 
mentioned his County Galway, — there were two 
naming the very parish adjoining his. The latest 
date on any stone was of the remoter fifties. 
They had all been stricken down, here in this 
strange land with its bitter winters, while the 
memory of their own soft, humid, gentle west- 
coast air was fresh within them. Musing upon the 
clumsy sculpture, with its “ R. I. P.,” or “ Pray for 
the Soul of,” half to be guessed under the stain 
130 _ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and moss of a generation, there would seem to 
him but a step from this present to that heart- 
rending, awful past. What had happened between 
was a meaningless vision, — as impersonal as the 
passing of the planets overhead. He rarely had 
an impulse to tears in the new cemetery, where his 
ten children were. He never left this weed-grown, 
forsaken old God’s-acre dry- eyed. 

One must not construct from all this the image 
of a melancholy man, as his fellows met and knew 
him. Mr. Madden kept his griefs, racial and indi- 
vidual, for his own use. To the men about him in 
the offices and the shops he presented day after 
day, year after year, an imperturbable cheeriness 
of demeanor. He had been always fortunate in 
the selection of lieutenants and chief helpers. Two 
of these had grown now into partners, and were 
almost as much a part of the big enterprise as 
Jeremiah himself. They spoke often of their 
inability to remember any unjust or petulant word 
of his, — much less any unworthy deed. Once 
they had seen him in a great rage, all the more 
impressive because he said next to nothing. A 
thoughtless fellow told a dirty story in the pres- 
ence of some apprentices ; and Madden, listening 
to this, drove the offender implacably from his 
employ. It was years now since any one who knew 
him had ventured upon lewd pleasantries in his 
hearing. Jokes of the sort which women might 
hear he was very fond of* though he had not 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


much humor of his own. Of books he knew 
nothing whatever, and he made only the most 
perfunctory pretence now and again of reading 
the newspapers. 

The elder son Michael was very like his father, 
— diligent, unassuming, kindly, and simple, — a 
plain, tall, thin red man of nearly thirty, who 
toiled in paper cap and rolled-up shirt-sleeves as 
the superintendent in the saw-mill, and put on no 
airs whatever as the son of the master. If there 
was surprise felt at his not being taken into the 
firm as a partner, he gave no hint of sharing it. 
He attended td his religious duties with great zeal, 
and was President of the Sodality as a matter of 
course. This was regarded as his blind side ; and 
young employees who cultivated it, and made 
broad their phylacteries under his notice, certainly 
had an added chance of getting on well in the 
works. To some few whom he knew specially 
well, Michael would confess that if he had had the 
brains for it, he should have wished to be a priest. 
He displayed no inclination to marry. 

The other son, Terence, was some eight 
years younger, and seemed the product of a 
wholly different race. The contrast between 
Michael’s sandy skin and long gaunt visage and 
this dark boy’s handsome, rounded face, with its 
prettily curling black hair, large, heavily fringed 
brown eyes, and delicately modelled features, was 
not more obvious than their temperamental sepa- 
133 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ration. This second lad had been away for years 
at school, — indeed, at a good many schools, for 
no one seemed to manage to keep him long. He 
had been with the Jesuits at Georgetown, with the 
Christian Brothers at Manhattan; the sectarian 
Mt. St. Mary’s and the severely secular Annapolis 
had both been tried, and proved misfits. The 
young man was home again now, and save that his 
name had become Theodore, he appeared in no 
wise changed from the beautiful, wilful, bold, and 
showy boy who had gone away in his teens. He 
was still rather small for his years, but so grace- 
fully moulded in form, and so perfectly tailored, 
that the fact seemed rather an advantage than 
otherwise. He never dreamed of going near the 
wagon- works, but he did go a good deal — in fact, 
most of the time — to the Nedahma Club. His 
mother spoke often to her friends about her fears 
for his health. He never spoke to his friends 
about his mother at all. 

The second Mrs. Madden did not, indeed, 
appeal strongly to the family pride. She had been 
a Miss Foley, a dress-maker, and an old maid. 
Jeremiah had married her after a brief widower- 
hood, principally because she was the sister of his 
parish priest, and had a considerable reputation 
for piety. It was at a time when the expansion of 
his business was promising cercain wealth, and 
suggesting the removal to Octavius. He was con- 
scious of a notion that his obligations to social 
*33 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


respectability were increasing ; it was certain that 
the embarrassments of a motherless family were. 
Miss Foley had shown a good deal of attention to 
his little children. She was not ill- looking; she 
bore herself with modesty; she was the priest’s 
sister, — the niece once removed of a vicar-gen- 
eral. And so it came about. 

Although those most concerned did not say so, 
everybody could see from the outset the pity of its 
ever having come about at all. The pious and 
stiffly respectable priest’s sister had been harmless 
enough as a spinster. It made the he c rt ache to 
contemplate her as a wife. Incredibly narrow- 
minded, ignorant, suspicious, vain, and sour- 
tempered, she must have driven a less equable 
and well-rooted man than Jeremiah Madden to 
drink or flight. He may have had his temptations, 
but they made no mark on the even record of his 
life. He only worked the harder, concentrating 
upon his business those extra hours which another 
sort of home-life would have claimed instead. 
The end of twenty years found him a rich man, 
but still toiling pertinaciously day by day, as if he 
had his wage to earn. In the great house which 
had been built to please, or rather placate, his 
wife, he kept to himself as much as possible. The 
popular story of his smoking alone in the kitchen 
was more or less true ; only Michael as a rule sat 
with him, too weak-lunged for tobacco himself, but 
reading stray scraps from the papers to the lonely 

A 34 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


old man, and talking with him about the works, 
the while Jeremiah meditatively sucked his clay 
pipe. One or two evenings in the week the twain 
spent up in Celia’s part of the house, listening with 
the awe of simple, honest mechanics to the music 
she played for them. 

Celia was to them something indefinably less, 
indescribably more, than a daughter and sister. 
They could not think there had ever been any- 
thing like her before in the world ; the notion of 
criticising any deed or word of hers would have 
appeared to them monstrous and unnatural. 

She seemed to have come up to this radiant and 
wise and marvellously talented womanhood of hers, 
to their minds, quite spontaneously. There had 
been a little Celia, — a red-headed, sulky, mutinous 
slip of a girl, always at war with her step-mother, 
and affording no special comfort or hope to the 
rest of the family. Then there was a long gap, 
during which the father, four times a year, handed 
Michael a letter he had received from the superi- 
oress of a distant convent, referring with cold for- 
mality to the studies and discipline by which Miss 
Madden might profit more if she had been better 
brought up, and enclosing a large bill. Then all 
at once they beheld a big Celia, whom they spoke 
of as being home again, but who really seemed 
never to have been there before, — a tall, hand- 
some, confident young woman, swift of tongue and 
apprehension, appearing to know everything there 
I3S 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


was to be known by the most learned, able to 
paint pictures, carve wood, speak in divers lan- 
guages, and make music for the gods, yet with it 
all a very proud lady, one might say a queen. 

The miracle of such a Celia as this impressed 
itself even upon the step-mother. Mrs. Madden 
had looked forward with a certain grim tightening 
of her combative jaws to the home-coming of the 
“ red-head.” She felt herself much more the fine 
lady now than she had been when the girl went 
away. She had her carriage now, and the mag- 
nificent new house was nearly finished, and she had 
a greater number of ailments, and spent far more 
money on doctor’s bills, than any other lady in 
the whole section. The flush of pride in her 
greatest achievement up to date — having the 
most celebrated of New York physicians brought 
up to Octavius by special train — still prickled in 
her blood. It was in all the papers, and the 
admiration of the flatterers and “ soft-sawdherers ” 
— wives of Irish merchants and smaller profes- 
sional men who formed her social circle — was 
raising visions in her poor head of going next year 
with Theodore to Saratoga, and fastening the 
attention of the whole fashionable republic upon 
the variety and resources of her invalidism. Mrs. 
Madden’s fancy did not run to the length of seeing 
her step-daughter also at Saratoga ; it pictured 
her still as the sullen and hated “ red-head,” 
moping defiantly in corners, or courting by her 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


insolence the punishments which leaped against 
their leash in the step-mother’s mind to get at her. 

The real Celia, when she came, fairly took Mrs. 
Madden’s breath away. The peevish little plans 
for annoyance and tyranny, the resolutions born of 
ignorant and jealous egotism, found themselves 
swept out of sight by the very first swirl of Celia’s 
dress-train, when she came down from her room 
robed in peacock blue. The step-mother could 
only stare. 

Now, after two years of it, Mrs. Madden still 
viewed her step-daughter with round-eyed uncer- 
tainty, not unmixed with wrathful fear. She 
still drove about behind two magnificent horses; 
the new house had become almost tiresome by 
familiarity; her pre-eminence in the interested 
minds of the Dearborn County Medical Society was 
as towering as ever, but somehow it was all 
different. There was a note of unreality nowadays 
in Mrs. Donnelly’s professions of wonder at her 
bearing up under her multiplied maladies ; there 
was almost a leer of mockery in the sympathetic 
smirk with which the Misses Mangan listened to 
her symptoms. Even the doctors, though they 
kept their faces turned toward her, obviously did 
not pay much attention ; the people in the street 
seemed no longer to look at her and her equipage 
at all. Worst of all, something of the meaning of 
this managed to penetrate her own mind. She 
caught now and again a dim glimpse of herself as 
137 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


others must have been seeing her for years, — as a 
stupid, ugly, boastful, and bad-tempered old nui- 
sance. And it was always as if she saw this in a 
mirror held up by Celia. 

Of open discord there had been next to none. 
Celia would not permit it, and showed this so 
clearly from the start that there was scarcely need 
for her saying it. It seemed hardly necessary for 
her to put into words any of her desires, for that 
matter. All existing arrangements in the Madden 
household seemed to shrink automatically and 
make room for her, whichever way she walked. 
A whole quarter of the unfinished house set itself 
apart for her. Partitions altered themselves ; door- 
ways moved across to opposite sides; a recess 
opened itself, tall and deep, for it knew not what 
statue, — simply because, it seemed, the Lady Celia 
willed it so. 

When the family moved into this mansion, it 
was with a consciousness that the only one who 
really belonged there was Celia. She alone could 
behave like one perfectly at home. It seemed 
entirely natural to the others that she should do 
just what she liked, shut them off from her portion 
of the house, take her meals there if she felt dis- 
posed, and keep such hours as pleased her instant 
whim. If she awakened them at midnight by her 
piano, or deferred her breakfast to the late after- 
noon, they felt that it must be all right, since 
Celia did it. She had one room furnished with 
>38 


Tlijr damnation of theron ware 


only divans and huge, soft cushions, its walls 
covered with large copies of statuary not too 
strictly clothed, which she would suffer no one, 
not even the servants, to enter. Michael fancied 
sometimes, when he passed the draped entrance 
to this sacred chamber, that the portiere smelt of 
tobacco, but he would not have spoken of it, even 
had he been sure. Old Jeremiah, whose estab- 
lished habit it was to audit minutely the expenses 
of his household, covered over round sums to 
Celia’s separate banking account, upon the mere 
playful hint of her holding her check-book up, 
without a dream of questioning her. 

That the step-mother had joy, or indeed any- 
thing but gall and wormwood, out of all this is 
not to be pretended. There lingered along in 
the recollection of the family some vague memo- 
ries of her having tried to assert an authority over 
Celia’s comings and goings at the outset, but 
they grouped themselves as only parts of the gen- 
eral disorder of moving and settling, which a fort- 
night or so quite righted. Mrs. Madden still 
permitted herself a certain license of hostile 
comment when her step-daughter was not present, 
and listened with gratification to what the women 
of her acquaintance ventured upon saying in the 
same spirit ; but actual interference or remonstrance 
she never offered nowadays. The two rarely met, 
for that matter, and exchanged only the baldest 
and curtest forms of speech. 

J 39 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Celia Madden interested all Octavius deeply. 
This she must have done in any case, if only 
because she was the only daughter of its richest 
citizen. But the bold, luxuriant quality of her 
beauty, the original and piquant freedom of her 
manners, the stories told in gossip about her law- 
lessness at home, her intellectual attainments, and 
artistic vagaries, — these were even more exciting. 
The unlikelihood of her marrying any one — at 
least any Octavian — was felt to add a certain 
romantic zest to the image she made on the local 
perceptions. There was no visible young Irish- 
man at all approaching the social and financial 
standard of the Maddens ; it was taken for granted 
that a mixed marriage was quite out of the ques- 
tion in this case. She seemed to have more 
business about the church than even the priest. 
She was always playing the organ, or drilling the 
choir, or decorating the altars with flowers, or 
looking over the robes of the acolytes for rents 
and stains, or going in or out of the pastorate. 
Clearly this was not the sort of girl to take a 
Protestant husband. 

The gossip of the town concerning her was, 
however, exclusively Protestant. The Irish spoke 
of her, even among themselves, but seldom. There 
was no occasion for them to pretend to like her : 
they did not know her, except in the most distant 
and formal fashion. Even the members of the 
choir, of both sexes, had the sense of being held 
140 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


away from her at haughty arm’s length. No 
single parishioner dreamed of calling her friend. 
But when they referred to her, it was always with 
a cautious and respectful reticence. For one 
thing, she was the daughter of their chief man, the 
man they most esteemed and loved. For another, 
reservations they may have had in their souls about 
her touched close upon a delicately sore spot. It 
could not escape their notice that their Protestant 
neighbors were watching her with vigilant curiosity, 
and with a certain tendency to wink when her 
name came into conversation along with that of 
Father Forbes. It had never yet got beyond a 
tendency, — the barest fluttering suggestion of a 
tempted eyelid, — but the whole Irish population 
of the place felt themselves to be waiting, with 
clenched fists but sinking hearts, for the wink 
itself. 

The Rev. Theron Ware had not caught even the 
faintest hint of these overtures to suspicion. 

When he had entered the huge, dark, cool vault 
of the church, he could see nothing at first but a 
faint light up over the gallery, far at the other end. 
Then, little by little, his surroundings shaped them- 
selves out of the gloom. To his right was a rail 
and some broad steps rising toward a softly con- 
fused mass of little gray vertical bars and the pale 
twinkle of tiny spots of gilded reflection, which he 
made out in the dusk to be the candles and trap- 
pings of the altar. Overhead the great arches 

141 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


faded away from foundations of dimly discernible 
capitals into utter blackness. There was a strange 
medicinal odor — as of cubeb cigarettes — in the 
air. 

After a little pause, he tiptoed noiselessly up the 
side aisle toward the end of the church, — toward 
the light above the gallery. This radiance from a 
single gas-jet expanded as he advanced, and 
spread itself upward over a burnished row of 
monster metal pipes, which went towering into the 
darkness like giants. They were roaring at him 
now, — a sonorous, deafening, angry bellow, which 
made everything about him vibrate. The gallery 
balustrade hid the keyboard and the organist from 
view. There were only these jostling brazen tubes, 
as big round as trees and as tall, trembling with 
their own furious thunder. It was for all the 
world as if he had wandered into some vast tragi- 
cal, enchanted cave, and was being drawn against 
his will — like fascinated bird and python — 
toward fate at the savage hands of these swollen 
and enraged genii. 

He stumbled in the obscure light over a kneel- 
ing-stool, making a considerable racket. On the 
instant the noise from the organ ceased, and he 
saw the black figure of a woman rise above the 
gallery-rail and look down. 

“Who is it?” the indubitable voice of Miss 
Madden demanded sharply. 

Theron had a sudden sheepish notion of turning 
142 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and running. With the best grace he could sum- 
mon, he called out an explanation instead. 

“ Wait a minute. I ’m through now. I 'm com- 
ing down,” she returned. He thought there was 
a note of amusement in her tone. 

She came to him a moment later, accompanied 
by a thin, tall man, whom Theron could barely see 
in the dark, now that the organ-light too was gone. 
This man lighted a match or two to enable them 
to make their way out. 

When they were on the sidewalk, Celia spoke : 
“ Walk on ahead, Michael ! ” she said. “ I have 
some matters to speak of with Mr. Ware.” 


CHAPTER X 


“ Well, what did you think of Dr. Ledsmar? ” 
The girl’s abrupt question came as a relief to 
Theron. They were walking along in a darkness 
so nearly complete that he could see next to noth- 
ing of his companion. For some reason, this 
seemed to suggest a sort of impropriety. He had 
listened to the footsteps of the man ahead, — whom 
he guessed to be a servant, — and pictured him as 
intent upon getting up early next morning to tell 
everybody that the Methodist minister had stolen 
into the Catholic church at night to walk home 
with Miss Madden. That was going to be very 
awkward, — yes, worse than awkward ! It might 
mean ruin itself. She had mentioned aloud that 
she had matters to talk over with him : that of 
course implied confidences, and the man might 
put heaven only knew what construction on that. 
It was notorious that servants did ascribe the very 
worst motives to those they worked for. The bare 
thought of the delight an Irish servant would have 
in also dragging a Protestant clergyman into the 
thing was sickening. And what could she want to 
talk to him about, anyway ? The minute of silence 
stretched itself out upon his nerves into an inter- 
- U4 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

minable period of anxious unhappiness. Hej 
mention of the doctor at last somehow seemed to 
lighten the situation. 

“ Oh, I thought he was very smart,” he made 
haste to answer. “ Would n’t it be better — to — 
keep close to your man? He — may — think 
we ’ve gone some other way.'* 

“ It would n’t matter if he did,” remarked Celia. 
She appeared to comprehend his nervousness and 
take pity on it, for she added, “It is my brother 
Michael, as good a soul as ever lived. He is quite 
used to my ways.” 

The Rev. Mr. Ware drew a long comforting 
breath. “ Oh, I see ! He went with you to — * 
bring you home.” 

“ To blow the organ,” said the girl in the dark; 
correctingly. “ But about that doctor ; did you 
like him?” 

“ Well,” Theron began, “ * like * is rather a 
strong word for so short an acquaintance. He 
talked very well; that is, fluently. But he is so 
different from any other man I have come into 
contact with that — ” 

“ What I wanted you to say was that you hated 
him,” put in Celia, firmly. 

“ I don’t make a practice of saying that of any- 
body,” returned Theron, so much at his ease again 
that he put an effect of gentle, smiling reproof 
into the words. “And why specially should I 
make an exception for him?” 
io 145 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ Because he ’s a beast ! ” 

Theron fancied that he understood. “ I noticed 
that he seemed not to have much of an ear for 
music,” he commented, with a little laugh. “ He 
shut down the window when you began to play. 
His doing so annoyed me, because I — I wanted 
very much to hear it all. I never heard such 
music before. I — I came into the church to 
hear more of it ; but then you stopped ! ” 

“ I will play for you some other time,” Celia 
said, answering the reproach in his tone. “ But 
to-night I wanted to talk with you instead.” 

She kept silent, in spite of this, so long now 
that Theron was on the point of jestingly asking 
when the talk was to begin. Then she put a ques- 
tion abruptly, — 

“ It is a conventional way of patting it, but are 
you fond of poetry, Mr. Ware?” 

“Well, yes, I suppose I am,” replied Theron, 
much mystified. “ I can’t say that I am any great 
judge; but I like the things that I like — and — ” 
“ Meredith,” interposed Celia, “ makes one of 
his women, Emilia in England, say that poetry is 
like talking on tiptoe ; like animals in cages, 
always going to one end and back again. Does it 
impress you that way? ” 

“ I don’t know that it does,” said he, dubiously. 
It seemed, however, to be her whim to talk liter- 
ature, and he went on : “ I ’ve hardly read Mere- 
dith at all. I once borrowed his ‘ Lucile,’ but 
146 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

somehow I never got interested in it. I heard a 
recitation of his once, though, — a piece about a 
dead wife, and the husband and another man quar- 
relling as to whose portrait was in the locket on 
her neck, and of their going up to settle the dis- 
pute, and finding that it was the likeness of a third 
man, a young priest, — and though it was very 
striking, it didn’t give me a thirst to know his 
other poems. I fancied I should n’t like them. 
But I daresay I was wrong. As I get older, I find 
that I take less narrow views of literature, — that 
is, of course, of light literature, — and that — 
that — ” 

Celia mercifully stopped him. “ The reason I 
asked you was — ” she began, and then herself 
paused. “ Or no, — never mind that, — tell me 
something else. Are you fond of pictures, statuary, 
the beautiful things of the world? Do great 
works of art, the big achievements of the big 
artists, appeal to you, stir you up?” 

“ Alas ! that is something I can only guess at 
myself,” answered Theron, humbly. a I have al- 
ways lived in little places. I suppose, from your 
point of view, I have never seen a good painting 
in my life. I can only say this, though, — that it 
has always weighed on my mind as a great and 
sore deprivation, this being shut out from knowing 
what others mean when they talk and write about 
art. Perhaps that may help you to get at what 
you are after. If I ever went to New York, I feel 
147 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


that one of the first things I should do would be 
to see all the picture galleries ; is that what you 
meant? And — would you mind telling me — - 
why you — ? ” 

“Why I asked you?” Celia supplied his halt- 
ing question. “No, I don't mind. I have a 
reason for wanting to know — to satisfy myself 
whether I had guessed rightly or not — about the 
kind of man you are. I mean in the matter of 
temperament and bent of mind and tastes.” 

The girl seemed to be speaking seriously, and 
without intern to offend. Theron did not find any 
comment ready, but walked along by her side, 
wondering much what it was all about. 

“ I daresay you think me ‘ too familiar on short 
acquaintance,’” she continued, after a little. 

“ My dear Miss Madden ! ” he protested per- 
functorily. 

“ No ; it is a matter of a good deal of impor- 
tance,” she went on. “ I can see that you are 
going to be thrown into friendship, close contact, 
with Father Forbes. He likes you, and you can’t 
help liking him. There is nobody else in this raw, 
overgrown, empty-headed place for you and him 
to like, — nobody except that man, that Dr. Leds- 
mar. And if you like him , I shall hate you ! He 
has done mischief enough already. I am count- 
ing on you to help undo it, and to choke him off 
from doing more. It would be different if you 
were an ordinary Orthodox minister, all encased 
148 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


like a terrapin in prejudices and nonsense. Of 
course, if you had been that kind, we should never 
have got to know you at all. But when I saw you 
in McEvoy’s cottage there, it was plain that you 
were one of us , — I mean a man , and not a mar- 
ionette or a mummy. I am talking very frankly 
to you, you see. I want you on my side, against 
that doctor and his heartless, bloodless science.” 

“ I feel myself very heartily on your side,” 
replied Theron. She had set their progress at a 
slower pace, now that the lights of the main street 
were drawing near, as if to prolong their talk. All 
his earlier reservations had fled. It was almost as 
if she were a parishioner of his own. “ I need 
hardly tell you that the doctor’s whole attitude 
toward — toward revelation — was deeply repug- 
nant to me. It does n’t make it any the less hate- 
ful to call it science. I am afraid, though,” he went 
on hesitatingly, “ that there are difficulties in the 
way of my helping, as you call it. You see, the 
very fact of my being a Methodist minister, and 
his being a Catholic priest, rather puts my interfer- 
ence out of the question.” 

" No ; that does n’t matter a button,” said Celia, 
lightly. “ None of us think of that at all.” 

“ There is the other embarrassment, then,” 
pursued Theron, diffidently, “that Father Forbes 
is a vastly broader and deeper scholar — in all 
these matters — than I am. How could I pos- 
sibly hope to influence him by my poor argu- 
149 


THE DAMNATION OF TRERON WARE 


ments? I don’t know even the alphabet of the 
language he thinks in, — on these subjects, I 
mean.’* 

“ Of course you don’t ! ” interposed the girl, 
with a confidence which the other, for all his 
meekness, rather winced under. “ That was n’t 
what I meant at all. We don’t want arguments 
from our friends : we want sympathies, sensibilities, 
emotional bonds. The right person’s silence is 
worth more for companionship than the wisest 
talk in the world from anybody else. It isn’t 
your mind that is needed here, or what you know ; 
it is your heart, and what you feel. You are full 
of poetry, of ideals, of generous, unselfish im- 
pulses. You see the human, the warm-blooded 
side of things. That is what is really valuable. 
That is how you can help ! ” 

“ You overestimate me sadly,” protested Theron, 
though with considerable tolerance for her error in 
his tone. “ But you ought to tell me something 
about this Dr. Ledsmar. He spoke of being an 
old friend of the pr — of Father Forbes.” 

“ Oh, yes, they ’ve always known each' other ; that 
is, for many years. They were professors together 
in a college once, heaven only knows how long 
ago. Then they separated, — I fancy they quar- 
relled, too, before they parted. The doctor 
here, where some relative had left him the plac* 
he lives in. Then in time the Bishop chanced to 
send Father Forbes here, — that was about three 

150 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


years ago, — and the two men after a while renewed 
their old relations. They dine together; that is 
the doctor’s stronghold. He knows more about 
eating than any other man alive, I believe. He 
studies it as you would study a language. He 
has taught old Maggie, at the pastorate there, to 
cook like the mother of all the Deknonicos. And 
while they sit and stuff themselves, or loll about 
afterward like gorged snakes, they think it is 
smart to laugh at all the sweet and beautiful things 
in life, and to sneer at people who believe in 
ideals, and to talk about mankind being merely a 
fortuitous product of fermentation, and twaddle of 
that sort. It makes me sick ! ” 

“ I can readily see,” said Theron, with sym- 
pathy, “how such a cold, material, and infidel 
influence as that must shock and revolt an essen- 
tially religious temperament like yours.” 

Miss Madden looked up at him. They had 
turned into the main street, and there was light 
enough for him to detect something startlingly like 
a grin on her beautiful face. 

“ But I ’m not religious at all, you know,” he 
heard her say. “ I ’m as Pagan as — anything \ 
Of course there are forms to be observed, and so 
on; I rather like them than otherwise. I can 
make them serve very well for my own system ; 
for I am myself, you know, an out-an-out Greek.” 

“Why, I had supposed that you were full- 
blooded Irish,” the Rev. Mr. Ware found himself 
151 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


remarking, and then on the instant was over- 
whelmed by the consciousness that he had said a 
foolish thing. Precisely where the folly lay he did 
not know, but it was impossible to mistake the ges- 
ture of annoyance which his companion had in- 
stinctively made at his words. She had widened 
the distance between them now, and quickened 
her step. They went on in silence till they were 
within a block of her house. Several people had 
passed them who Theron felt sure must have 
recognized them both. 

“ What I meant was,” the girl all at once began, 
drawing nearer again, and speaking with patient 
slowness, “ that I find myself much more in sym- 
pathy with the Greek thought, the Greek theology 
of the beautiful and the strong, the Greek phil- 
osophy of life, and all that, than what is taught 
nowadays. Personally, I take much more stock in 
Plato than I do in Peter. But of course it is a 
wholly personal affair ; I had no business to bother 
you with it. And for that matter, I oughtn't to 
have troubled you with any of our — ” 

“ I assure you, Miss Madden ! ” the young min- 
ister began, with fervor. 

“No,” she broke in, in a resigned and even 
downcast tone ; “ let it all be as if I had n’t spoken. 
Don’t mind anything I have said. If it is to be, it 
will be. You can’t say more than that, can you?” 

She looked into his face again, and her large 
eyes produced an impression of deep melancholy, 
1^2 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


which Theron found himself somehow impelled to 
share. Things seemed all at once to have become 
very sad indeed. 

“ It is one of my unhappy nights,” she ex- 
plained, in gloomy confidence. “ I get them 
^very once in a while, — as if some vicious planet 
or other was crossing in front of my good star, 
— and then I ’m a caution to snakes. I shut my- 
self up — that ’s the only thing to do — and have 
it out with myself. I did n’t know but the organ- 
music would calm me down, but it hasn’t. I 
sha’n’t sleep a wink to-night, but just rage around 
from one room to another, piling all the cushions 
from the divans on to the floor, and then kicking 
them away again. Do you ever have fits like 
that ?” 

Theron was able to reply with a good con- 
science in the negative. It occurred to him to 
add, with jocose intent : “ I am curious to know, 
do these fits, as you call them, occupy a prominent 
part in Grecian philosophy as a general rule? ” 

Celia gave a little snort, which might have sig- 
nified amusement, but did not speak until they 
were upon her own sidewalk. “ There is my 
brother, waiting at the gate,” she said then, briefly. 

“ Well, then, I will bid you good-night here, I 
think,” Theron remarked, coming to a halt, and 
offering his hand. “ It must be getting very late, 
and my — that is — I have to be up particularly 
early to-morrow. So good-night j I hope you 
is* 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


will be feeling ever so much better in spirits in 
the morning.” 

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” replied the girl, 
listlessly. “ It ’s a very paltry little affair, this life 
of ours, at the best of it. Luckily it ’s soon done 
with, — like a bad dream.” 

“Tut ! tu: ! I won’t have you talk like that ! ” 
interrupted Theron, with a swift and smart assump- 
tion of authority. “ Such talk is n’t sensible, and 
it isn’t good. I have no patience with it ! ” 

“ Well, try and have a little patience with me y 
anyway, just for to-night,” said Celia, taking 
the reproof with gentlest humility, rather to her 
censor’s surprise. “ I really am unhappy to-night, 
Mr. Ware, very unhappy. It seems as if all at 
once the world had swelled out in size a thousand- 
fold, and that poor me had dwindled down to the 
merest wee little red -headed atom, — the most 
helpless and forlorn and lonesome of atoms at 
that.” She seemed to force a sorrowful smile on 
her face as she added : “ But ail the same it has 
done me good to be with you, — I am sure it has, 

— and I daresay that by to-morrow I shall be 
quite out of the blues. Good-night, Mr. Ware. 
Forgive my making such an exhibition of myself. 
I was going to be such a fine early Greek, you 
know, and I have turned out only a late Milesian, 

— quite of the decadence. I shall do better 
next time. And good-night again, — and ever so 
many thanks.” 




THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


She was walking briskly away toward the gate 
now, where the shadowy Michael still patiently 
stood. Theron strode off in the opposite direc- 
tion, taking long, deliberate steps, and bowing his 
head in thought. He had his hands behind his 
back, as was his wont, and the sense of their 
recent contact with her firm, ungloved hands was, 
curiously enough, the thing which pushed itself 
uppermost in his mind. There had been a frank, 
almost manly vigor in her grasp ; he said to him- 
self that of course that came from her playing so 
much on the keyboard; the exercise naturally 
would give her large, robust hands. 

Suddenly he remembered about the piano ; he 
had quite forgotten to solicit her aid in selecting 
it. He turned, upon the impulse, to go back. 
She had not entered the gate as yet, but stood, 
shiningly visible under the street lamp, on the 
sidewalk, and she was looking in his direction. 
He turned again like a shot, and started home- 
ward. 

The front door of the parsonage was unlocked, 
and he made his way on tiptoe through the un- 
lighted hall to the living-room. The stuffy air 
here was almost suffocating with the evil smell of a 
kerosene lamp turned down too low. Alice sat 
asleep in her old farmhouse rocking-chair, with an 
inelegant darning-basket on the table by her side. 
The whole effect of the room was as bare and 
squalid to Theron’s newly informed eye as the 
*55 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


atmosphere was offensive to his nostrils. He 
coughed sharply, and his wife sat up and looked 
at the clock. It was after eleven. 

“ Where on earth have you been?” she asked, 
with a yawn, turning up the wick of her sewing- 
lamp again. 

“ You ought never to turn down a light like that,” 
said Theron, with a complaining note in his voice. 
“ It smells up the whole place. I never dreamed 
of your sitting up for me like this. You ought to 
have gone to bed.” 

“ But how could I guess that you were going to 
be so late ? ” she retorted. “ And you have n’t 
told me where you were. Is this book of yours 
going to keep you up like this right along?” 

The episode of the book was buried in the 
young minister’s rnind beneath such a mass of 
subsequent experiences that it required an effort 
for him to grasp what she was talking about. It 
seemed as if months had elapsed since he was in 
earnest about that book ; and yet he had left the 
house full of it only a few hours before. He shook 
his wits together, and made answer, — 

" Oh, bless you, no ! Only there arose a very 
curious question. You have no idea, literally no 
conception, of the interesting and important prob- 
lems which are raised by the mere fact of Abraham 
leaving the city of Ur. It ’s amazing, I assure 
you. I hadn’t realized it myself.” 

“Well,” remarked Alice, rising, — and with 

156 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


good-humor and petulance struggling sleepily in 
her tone, — “ all I ’ve got to say is, that if Abra- 
ham hasn’t anything better to do than to keep 
young ministers of the gospel out, goodness knows 
where, till all hours of the night, I wish to gra- 
cious he ’d stayed in the city of Ur right straight 
along.” 

“ You have no idea what a scholarly man Dr. 
Ledsmar is,” Theron suddenly found himself in- 
spired to volunteer. “ He has the most marvellous 
collection of books, — a whole library devoted to 
this very subject, — and he has put them all quite 
freely at my disposal. Extremely kind of him, 
isn’t it?” 

“Ledsmar? Ledsmar?” queried Alice. “I 
don’t seem to remember the name. He isn’t 
the little man with the birthmark, who sits in the 
pew behind the Lovejoys, is he? I think some 
one said he was a doctor.” 

“Yes, a horse doctor!” said Theron, with a 
sniff. “ No ; you have n’t seen this Dr. Ledsmar 
at all. I — I don’t know that he attends any 
church regularly. I scraped his acquaintance quite 
by accident. He is really a character. He lives 
in the big house, just beyond the race-course, you 
know — the one with the tower at the back — ” 

“No, I don't know. How should I? I’ve 
hardly poked my nose outside of the yard since 
I have been here.” 

“Well, you shall go,” said the husband, con- 

1 57 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


solingly. “You have been cooped up here too 
much, poor girl. I must take you out more, 
really. I don’t know that I could take you 
to the doctor’s place — without an invitation, 
I mean. He is very queer about some things. 
Fie lives there all alone, for instance, with only a 
Chinaman for a servant. He told me I was almost 
the only man he had asked under his roof for 
years. He is n’t a practising physician at all, you 
know. He is a scientist ; he makes experiments 
with lizards — and things.” 

“Theron,” the wife said, pausing lamp in hand 
on her way to the bedroom, “ do you be careful, 
now ! For all you know this doctor may be a 
loose man, or pretty near an infidel. You ’ve got 
to be mighty particular in such matters, you know, 
or you ’ll have the trustees down on you like a 
* thousand of bricks.’ ” 

“ I will thank the trustees to mind their own 
business,” said Theron, stiffly, and the subject 
dropped. 

The bedroom window upstairs was open, and 
upon the fresh night air was borne in the shrill, 
jangling sound of a piano, being played off some- 
where in the distance, but so vehemently that the 
noise imposed itself upon the silence far and wide. 
Theron listened to this as he undressed. It pro- 
ceeded from the direction of the main street, and 
he knew, as by instinct, that it was the Madden 
girl who was playing. The incongruity of the hour 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


escaped his notice. He mused instead upon the wild 
and tropical tangle of moods, emotions, passions, 
which had grown up in that strange temperament. 
He found something very pathetic in that picture 
she had drawn of herself in forecast, roaming dis- 
consolate through her rooms the livelong night, 
unable to sleep. The woful moan of insomnia 
seemed to make itself heard in every strain from 
her piano. 

Alice heard it also, but being unillumined, she 
missed the romantic pathos. “ I call it disgrace- 
ful,” she muttered from her pillow, “for folks to 
be banging away on a piano at this time of night. 
There ought to be a law to prevent it.” 

“ It may be some distressed soul,” said The- 
ron, gently, “seeking relief from the curse of 
sleeplessness.” 

The wife laughed, almost contemptuously. 
* Distressed fiddlesticks ! ” was her only other 
comment. 

The music went on for a long time, — rising 
now to strident heights, now sinking off to the 
merest tinkling murmur, and broken ever and 
again by intervals of utter hush. It did not pre- 
vent Alice from at once falling sound asleep ; but 
Theron lay awake, it seemed to him, for hours, 
listening tranquilly, and letting his mind wander at 
will through the pleasant antechambers of Sleep, 
where are more unreal fantasies than Dreamland 
itself affords. 


PART II 


CHAPTER XI 

For some weeks the Rev. Theron Ware saw 
nothing of either the priest or the doctor, or the 
interesting Miss Madden. 

There were, indeed, more urgent matters to 
think about. June had come ; and every suc- 
ceeding day brought closer to hand the ordeal of 
his first Quarterly Conference in Octavius. The 
waters grew distinctly rougher as his pastoral bark 
neared this difficult passage. 

He would have approached the great event with 
an easier mind if he could have made out just how 
he stood with his congregation. Unfortunately 
nothing in his previous experiences helped him in 
the least to measure or guess at the feelings of 
these curious Octavians. Their Methodism seemed 
to be sound enough, and to stick quite to the letter 
of the Discipline, so long as it was expressed in 
formulae. It was its spirit which he felt to be 
complicated by all sorts of conditions wholly novel 
to him. 

The existence of a line of street-cars in the 
town, for example, would not impress the casual 
160 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


thinker as likely to prove a rock in the path of 
peaceful religion. Theron, in his simplicity, had 
even thought, when he first saw these bobtailed 
cars bumping along the rails in the middle of the 
main street, that they must be a great convenience 
to people living in the outskirts, who wished to 
get in to church of a Sunday morning. He was 
imprudent enough to mention this in conversation 
with one of his new parishioners. Then he learned, 
to his considerable chagrin, that when this line was 
built, some years before, a bitter war of words had 
been fought upon the question of its being worked 
on the Sabbath day. The then occupant of the 
Methodist pulpit had so distinguished himself above 
the rest by the solemnity and fervor of his protests 
against this insolent desecration of God’s day that 
the Methodists of Octavius still felt themselves 
peculiarly bound to hold this horse-car line, its 
management, and everything connected with it, in 
unbending aversion. At least once a year they 
were accustomed to expect a sermon denouncing 
it and all its impious Sunday patrons. Theron 
made a mental resoive that this year they should 
be disappointed. 

Another burning problem, which he had not 
been called upon before to confront, he found 
now entangled with the mysterious line which 
divided a circus from a menagerie. Those itiner- 
ant tent-shows had never come his way heretofore, 
and he knew nothing of that fine balancing pro- 
ii . 161 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


portion between ladies in tights on horseback and 
cages full of deeply educational animals, which, 
even as the impartial rain, was designed to em- 
brace alike the just and the unjust. There had 
arisen inside the Methodist society of Octavius 
some painful episodes, connected with members 
who took their children “just to see the animals,” 
and were convicted of having also watched the 
Rose-Queen of the Arena, in her unequalled flying 
leap through eight hoops, with an ardent and un- 
asnamed eye. One of these cases still remained on 
the censorial docket of the church • and Theron 
understood that he was expected to name a com- 
mittee of five to examine and try it. This he 
neglected to do. 

He was no longer at all certain that the con- 
gregation as a whole liked his sermons. The 
truth was, no doubt, that he had learned enough 
to cease regarding the congregation as a whole. 
He could still rely upon carrying along with him 
in his discourses from the pulpit a large majority 
of interested and approving faces. But here, 
unhappily, was a case where the majority did not 
rule. The minority, relatively small in numbers, 
was prodigious in virile force. 

More than twenty years had now elapsed since 
that minor schism in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, the result of which was the independent 
body known as Free Methodists, had relieved the 
parent flock of its principal disturbing element. 

162 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


The rupture came fittingly at that time when 
all the “ isms ” of the argumentative fifties were 
hurled violently together into the melting-pot of 
civil war. The great Methodist Church, South, 
had broken bodily off on the question of State 
Rights. The smaller and domestic fraction of 
Free Methodism separated itself upon an issue 
which may be most readily described as one of 
civilization. The seceders resented growth in 
material prosperity; they repudiated the intro- 
duction of written sermons and organ-music; 
they deplored the increasing laxity in meddle- 
some piety, the introduction of polite manners 
in the pulpit and class-room, and the develop- 
ment of even a rudimentary desire among the 
younger people of the church to be like others 
outside in dress and speech and deportment. 
They did battle as long as they could, inside the 
fold, to restore it to the severely straight and narrow 
path of primitive Methodism. When the adverse 
odds became too strong for them, they quitted the 
church and set up a Bethel for themselves. 

Octavius chanced to be one of the places where 
they were able to hold their own within the church 
organization. The Methodism of the town had 
gone along without any local secession. It still 
held in full fellowship the radicals who elsewhere 
had followed their unbridled bent into the strong- 
est emotional vagaries, — where excited brethren 
worked themselves up into epileptic fits, and 

163 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


women whirled themselves about in weird re- 
ligious ecstasies, like dervishes of the Orient, till 
they fell headlong in a state of trance. Octavian 
Methodism was spared extravagances of this sort, 
it is true, but it paid a price for the immunity. 
The people whom an open split would have taken 
away remained to leaven and dominate the whole 
lump. This small advanced section, with its men 
of a type all the more aggressive from its narrow- 
ness, and women who went about solemnly in plain 
gray garments, with tight-fitting, unadorned, mouse- 
colored sunbonnets, had not been able wholly to 
enforce its views upon the social life of the church 
members, but of its controlling influence upon their 
official and public actions there could be no doubt. 

The situation had begun to unfold itself to 
Theron from the outset. He had recognized the 
episodes of the forbidden Sunday milk and of the 
flowers in poor Alice’s bonnet as typical of much 
more that was to come. No week followed without 
bringing some new fulfilment of this foreboding. 
Now, at the end of two months, he knew well 
enough that the hitherto dominant minority was 
hostile to him and his ministry, and would do 
whatever it could against him. 

Though Theron at once decided to show fight, 
and did not at all waver in that resolve, his 
courage was in the main of a despondent sort. 
Sometimes it would flutter up to the point of 
confidence, or at least hopefulness, when he met 
164 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


with substantial men of the church who obviously 
liked him, and whom he found himself mentally 
ranging on his side, in the struggle which was to 
come. But more often it was blankly apparent 
to him that, the moment flags were flying and 
drums on the roll, these amiable fair-weather 
friends would probably take to their heels. 

Still, such as they were, his sole hope lay in 
their support. He must make the best of them. 
He set himself doggedly to the task of gathering 
together all those who were not his enemies into 
what, when the proper time came, should be 
known as the pastor’s party. There was plenty 
of apostolic warrant for this. If there had not 
been, Theron felt that the mere elementary de- 
mands of self-defence would have justified his 
use of strategy. 

The institution of pastoral calling, particularly 
that inquisitorial form of it laid down in the Dis- 
cipline, had never attracted Theron. He and 
Alice had gone about among their previous flocks 
in quite a haphazard fashion, without thought of 
system, much less of deliberate purpose. Theron 
made lists now, and devoted thought and exami- 
nation to the personal tastes and characteristics of 
the people to be cultivated. There were some, for 
example, who would expect him to talk pretty much 
as the Discipline ordained, — that is, to ask if they 
had family prayer, to inquire after their souls, and 
generally to minister grace to his hearers, — and 
l K 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


these in turn subdivided themselves into classes, 
ranging from those who would wish nothing else 
to those who needed only a mild spiritual flavor. 
There were others whom he would please much 
better by not talking shop at all. Although he 
could ill afford it, he subscribed now for a daily 
paper that he might have a perpetually renewed 
source of good conversational topics for these 
more worldly calls. He also bought several 
pounds of candy, pleasing in color, but warranted 
to be entirely harmless, and he made a large 
mysterious mark on the inside of his new silk hat 
to remind him not to go out calling without some 
of this in his pocket for the children. 

Alice, he felt, was not helping him in this mat- 
ter as effectively as he could have wished. Her 
attitude toward the church in Octavius might best 
be described by the word “ sulky.” Great allow- 
ance was to be made, he realized, for her humilia- 
tion over the flowers in her bonnet. That might 
justify her, fairly enough, in being kept away from 
meeting now and again by headaches, or unde- 
fined megrims. But it ought not to prevent her 
from going about and making friends among the 
kindlier parishioners who would welcome such a 
thing, and whom he from time to time indicated to 
her. She did go to some extent, it is true, but she 
produced, in doing so, an effect of performing a 
duty. He did not find traces anywhere of her 
having created a brilliant social impression. When 
x66 


fHE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


they went out together, he was peculiarly conscious 
of having to do the work unaided. 

This was not at all like the Alice of former years, 
of other charges. Why, she had been, beyond com- 
parison, the most popular young woman in Tyre. 
What possessed her to mope like this in Octavius ? 

Theron looked at her attentively nowadays, when 
she was unaware of his gaze, to try if her face 
offered any answer to the riddle. It could not 
be suggested that she was ill. Never in her life 
had she been looking so well. She had thrown 
herself, all at once, and with what was to him an 
unaccountable energy, into the creation and man- 
agement of a flower-garden. She was out the 
better part of every day, rain or shine, digging, 
transplanting, pruning, pottering generally about 
among her plants and shrubs. This work in the 
open air had given her an aspect of physical well- 
being which it was impossible to be mistaken about. 

Her husband was glad, of course, that she had 
found some occupation which at once pleased her 
and so obviously conduced to health. This was so 
much a matter of course, in fact, that he said to 
himself over and over again that he was glad. 
Only — only, sometimes the thought would force 
itself upon his attention that if she did not spend 
so much of her time in her own garden, she would 
have more time to devote to winning friends for 
them in the Garden of the Lord, — friends whom 
they were going to need badly. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


The young minister, in taking anxious stock oi 
the chances for and against him, turned over often 
in his mind the fact that he had already won rank 
as a pulpit orator. His sermons had attracted al- 
most universal attention at Tyre, and his achieve- 
ment before the Conference at Tecumseh, if it did 
fail to receive practical reward, had admittedly dis- 
tanced all the other preaching there. It was a part 
of the evil luck pursuing him that here in this per- 
versely enigmatic Octavius his special gift seemed 
to be of no use whatever. There were times, 
indeed, when he was tempted to think that bad 
preaching was what Octavius wanted. 

Somewhere he had heard of a Presbyterian 
minister, in charge of a big city church, who man- 
aged to keep well in with a watchfully Orthodox 
congregation, and at the same time establish him- 
self in the affections of the community at large, by 
simply preaching two kinds of sermons. In the 
morning, when almost all who attended were his 
own communicants, he gave them very cautious 
and edifying doctrinal discourses, treading loyally 
in the path of the Westminster Confession. To 
the evening assemblages, made up for the larger 
part of outsiders, he addressed broadly liberal 
sermons, literary in form, and full of respectful 
allusions to modern science and the philosophy of 
the day. Thus he filled the church at both ser- 
vices, and put money in its treasury and his own 
fame before the world. There was of course the 
168 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


obvious danger that the pious elders who in the 
forenoon heard infant damnation vigorously pro- 
claimed, would revolt when they heard after sup- 
per that there was some doubt about even adults 
being damned at all. But either because the 
same people did not attend both services, or be- 
cause the minister’s perfect regularity in the morn- 
ing was each week regarded as a retraction of his 
latest vagaries of an evening, no trouble ever came. 

Theron had somewhat tentatively tried this on in 
Octavius. It was no good. His parishioners were 
of the sort who would have come to church eight 
times a day on Sunday, instead of two, if occasion of- 
fered. The hope that even a portion of them would 
stop away, and that their places would be taken in 
the evening by less prejudiced strangers who wished 
for intellectual rather than theological food, fell by 
the wayside. The yearned-for strangers did not 
come ; the familiar faces of the morning service all 
turned up in their accustomed places every evening. 
They were faces which confused and disheartened 
Theron in the daytime. Under the gaslight they 
seemed even harder and more unsympathetic. He 
timorously experimented with them for an evening 
or two, then abandoned the effort. 

Once there had seemed the beginning of a chance. 
The richest banker in Octavius — a fat, sensual, 
hog-faced old bachelor — surprised everybody one 
evening by entering the church and taking a seat. 
Theron happened to know who he was ; even if he 
169 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


had not known, the suppressed excitement visible 
in the congregation, the way the sisters turned round 
to look, the way the more important brethren put 
their heads together and exchanged furtive whis- 
pers, — would have warned him that big game was 
in view. He recalled afterward with something like 
self-disgust the eager, almost tremulous pains he 
himself took to please this banker. There was a 
part of the sermon, as it had been written out, 
which might easily give offence to a single man of 
wealth and free notions of life. With the alertness 
of a mental gymnast, Theron ran ahead, excised 
this portion, and had ready when the gap was 
reached some very pretty general remarks, all the 
more effective and eloquent, he felt, for having been 
extemporized. People said it was a good sermon ; 
and after the benediction and dispersion some of 
the officials and principal pew-holders remained to 
talk over the likelihood of a capture having been 
effected. Theron did not get away without having 
this mentioned to him, and he was conscious of 
sharing deeply the hope of the brethren, — with the 
added reflection that it would be a personal triumph 
for himself into the bargain. He was ashamed of 
this feeling a little later, and of his trick with the 
sermon. But this chastening product of introspec- 
tion was all the fruit which the incident bore. The 
banker never came again. 

Theron returned one afternoon, a little earlier 
than usual, from a group of pastoral calls. Alice, 
170 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


who was plucking weeds in a border at the shady 
side of the house, heard his step, and rose from 
her labors. He was walking slowly, and seemed 
weary. He took off his high hat, as he saw her, 
and wiped his brow. The broiling June sun was 
still high overhead. Doubtless it was its insufferable 
heat which was accountable for the worn lines in 
his face and the spiritless air which the wife’s eye 
detected. She went to the gate, and kissed him as 
he entered. 

“ I believe, if I were you,” she said, “ I ’d carry 
an umbrella such scorching days as this. Nobody ’d 
think anything of it. I don’t see why a minister 
should n’t carry one as much as a woman carries a 
parasol.” 

Theron gave her a rueful, meditative sort of 
smile. “ I suppose people really do think of us as 
a kind of hybrid female,” he remarked. Then, 
holding his hat in his hand, he drew a long breath of 
relief at finding himself in the shade, and looked 
about him. 

“ Why, you ’ve got more posies here, on this one 
side of the house alone, than mother had in her whole 
yard,” he said, after a little. “ Let ’s see — I know 
that one : that ’s columbine, is n’t it ? And that ’s 
London pride, and that ’s ragged robin. I don’t 
know any of the others.” 

Alice recited various unfamiliar names, as she 
pointed out the several plants which bore them, 
and he listened with a kindly semblance of interest. 

171 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


They strolled thus to the rear of the house, where 
thick clumps of fragrant pinks lined both sides of 
the path. She picked some of these for him, and 
gave him more names with which to label the con- 
siderable number of other plants he saw about him. 

“ I had no idea we were so well provided as all 
this,” he commented at last. “ Those Van Sizers 
must have been tremendous hands for flowers. 
You were lucky in following such people.” 

“ Van Sizers ! ” echoed Alice, with contempt. 
“ All they left was old tomato cans and clamshells. 
Why, I Ve put in every blessed one of these myself, 
all except those peonies, there, and one brier on the 
side wall.” 

“ Good for you ! ” exclaimed Theron, approv- 
ingly. Then it occurred to him to ask, “ But 
where did you get them all ? Around among our 
friends ? ” 

:i Some few,” responded Alice, with a note of 
hesitation in her voice. “ Sister Bult gave me the 
verbenas, there, and the white pinks were a present 
from Miss Stevens. But most of them Levi Gor- 
ringe was good enough to send me, ■ — from his 
garden.” 

“I didn’t know that Gorringe had a garden,” 
said Theron. “ I thought he lived over his law- 
offlce, in the brick block, there.” 

“Well, I don’t know that it ’s exactly his,” ex- 
plained Alice ; “ but it 's a big garden somewhere 
outside, where he can have anything he likes.” 

172 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


She went on with a little laugh : “ I did n’t like to 
question him too closely, for fear he ’d think I was 
looking a gift horse in the mouth, — or else hinting 
for more. It was quite his own offer, you know. 
He picked them all out for me, and brought them 
here, and lent me a book telling me just what to do 
with each one. And in a few days, now, I am to 
have another big batch of plants, — dahlias and 
zinnias and asters and so on ; I ’m almost ashamed 
to take them. But it ’s such a change to find some 
one in this Octavius who is n’t all self ! ” 

“Yes, Gorringe is a good fellow,” said Theron. 
“ I wish he was a professing member.” Then 
some new thought struck him. “ Alice,” he ex- 
claimed, “ I believe I ’ll go and see him this very 
afternoon. I don’t know why it has n’t occurred 
to me before : he ’s just the man whose advice I 
need most. He knows these people here ; he 
can tell me what to do.” 

“Aren’t you too tired now?” suggested Alice, 
as Theron put on his hat. 

“ No, the sooner the better,” he replied, moving 
now toward the gate. 

“ Well,” she began, “ if I were you, I would n’t 
say too much about — that is, I — but never mind.” 

“ What is it ? ” asked her husband. 

“ Nothing whatever,” replied Alice, positively. 
“ It was only some nonsense of mine ; ” and 
Theron, placidly accepting the feminine whim, 
went off down the street again. 

173 


CHAPTER XII 


The Rev. Mr. Ware found Levi Gorringe’s law- 
office readily enough, but its owner was not in. 
He probably would be back again, though, in a 
quarter of an hour or so, the boy said, and the 
minister at once decided to wait. 

Theron was interested in finding that this office- 
boy was no other than Harvey, — the lad who 
brought milk to the parsonage every morning. 
He remembered now that he had heard good things 
of this urchin, as to the hard work he did to help 
his mother, the Widow Semple, in her struggle to 
keep a roof over her head ; and also bad things, in 
that he did not come regularly either to church or 
Sunday-school. The clergyman recalled, too, that 
Harvey had impressed him as a character. 

“ Well, sonny, are you going to be a lawyer? ” 
he asked, as he seated himself by the window, and 
looked about him, first at the dusty litter of old 
papers, pamphlets, and tape-bound documents in 
bundles which crowded the stuffy chamber, and 
then at the boy himself. 

Harvey was busy at a big box, — a rough pine 
dry-goods box which bore the flaring label of an 
express company, and also of a well-known seed- 
174 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


firm in a Western city, and which the boy had 
apparently just opened. He was lifting from it, 
and placing on the table after he had shaken off 
the sawdust and moss in which they were packed, 
small parcels of what looked in the fading light 
to be half-dried plants. 

“ Well, I don’t know — I rather guess not,” he 
made answer, as he pursued his task. “ So far as 
I can make out, this wouldn’t be the place to 
start in at, if I was going to be a lawyer. A boy 
can learn here first-rate how to load cartridges 
and clean a gun, and braid trout- flies on to leaders, 
but I don’t see much law laying around loose. 
Anyway,” he went on, “ I could n’t afford to read 
law, and not be getting any wages. I have to 
earn money, you know.” 

Theron felt that he liked the boy. “ Yes,” he 
said, with a kindly tone ; “ I ’ve heard that you are 
a good, industrious youngster. I daresay Mr. Gor- 
ringe will see to it that you get a chance to read 
law, and get wages too.” 

“Oh, I can read all there is here and welcome,” 
the boy explained, stepping toward the window to 
decipher the label on a bundle of roots in his hand, 
“but that ’s no good unless there ’s regular prac- 
tice coming into the office all the while. That ’ s 
how you learn to be a lawyer. But Gorringe don’t 
have what I call a practice at all. He just sees 
men in the other room there, with the door shut, 
and whatever there is to do he does it all himself.” 


175 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


The minister remembered a stray hint some- 
where that Mr. Gorringe was a money-lender, 
— what was colloquially called a “note-shaver.” 
To his rustic sense, there was something not 
quite nice about that occupation. It would 
be indecorous, he felt, to encourage further talk 
about it from the boy. 

“ What are you doing there ? ” he inquired, to 
change the subject. 

“ Sorting out some plants,” replied Harvey. “ I 
don’t know what ’s got into Gorringe lately. This is 
the third big box he ’s had since I ’ve been here, — 
that is, in six weeks, — besides two baskets full of 
rose-bushes. I don’t know what he does with them. 
He carries them off* himself somewhere. I ’ve 
had kind of half a notion that he ’s figurin’ on get- 
ting married. I can’t think of anything else that 
would make a man spend money like water, — just 
for flowers and bushes. They do get foolish, you 
know, when they ’ve got marriage on the brain.” 

Theron found himself only imperfectly following 
the theories of the young philosopher. It was his 
fact that monopolized the minister’s attention. 

“ But as I understand it,” he remarked hesita- 
tingly, “ Brother Gorringe — or rather Mr. Gor- 
ringe — gets all the plants he wants, everything 
he likes, from a big garden somewhere outside. I 
don’t know that it is exactly his ; but I remember 
hearing something to that effect.” 

The boy slapped the last sawdust off* his hands, 
.176 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and, as he came to the window, shook his head. 
“ These don’t come from no garden outside,” he 
declared. “ They come from the dealers’, and he 
pays solid cash for ’em. The invoice for this lot 
alone was thirty-one dollars and sixty cents. 
There it is on the table. You can see it for 
yourself.” 

Mr. Ware did not offer to look. “ Very likely 
these are for the garden I was speaking of,” he 
said. “ Of course you can’t go on taking plants 
out .of a garden indefinitely without putting 
others in.” 

“ I don’t know anything about any garden that 
he takes plants out of,” answered Harvey, and 
looked meditatively for a minute or two out upon 
the street below. Then he turned to the minis- 
ter. “ Your wife ’s doing a good deal of gardening 
this spring, I notice,” he said casually. “ You ’d 
hardly think it was the same place, she 's fixed it 
up so. If she wants any extra hoeing done, I can 
always get off Saturday afternoons.” 

“ I will remember,” said Theron. He also 
looked out of the window ; and nothing more was 
said until, a few moments later, Mr. Gorringe him- 
self came in. 

The lawyer seemed both surprised and pleased 
at discovering the identity of his visitor, with whom 
he shook hands in almost an excess of cordiality. 
He spread a large newspaper over the pile of seed- 
ling plants on the table, pushed the packing- box 
12 177 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


under the table with his foot, and said almost per- 
emptorily to the boy, “ You can go now ! ” 
Then he turned again to Theron. 

“Well, Mr. Ware, I’m glad to see you,” he 
repeated, and drew up a chair by the window. 
“ Things are going all right with you, I hope.” 

Theron noted again the waving black hair, the 
dark skin, and the carefully trimmed mustache 
and chin-tuft which gave the lawyer’s face a com- 
bined effect of romance and smartness. No; it 
was the eyes, cool, shrewd, dark-gray eyes, which 
suggested this latter quality. The recollection of 
having seen one of them wink, in deliberate hos- 
tility of sarcasm, when those other trustees had 
their backs turned, came mercifully at the moment 
to recall the young minister to his errand. 

“I thought I would drop in and have a chat 
with you,” he said, getting better under way as he 
went on. “ Quarterly Conference is only a fort- 
night off, and I am a good deal at sea about what 
is going to happen.” 

“ I ’m not a church member, you know,” inter- 
posed Gorringe. “That shuts me out of the 
Quarterly Conference.” 

“Alas, yes ! ” said Theron. “I wish it did n’t. 
I ’m afraid I ’m not going to have any friends to 
spare there.” 

“What are you afraid of?” asked the lawyer, 
seeming now ^to be wholly at his ease again. 
“They can’t eat you.” 

i 7 8 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ No, they keep me too lean for that,” responded 
Theron, with a pensive smile. “ I was going to 
ask, you know, for an increase of salary, or an 
extra allowance. I don’t see how I can go on as 
it is. The sum fixed by the last Quarterly Confer- 
ence of the old year, and which I am getting now, 
is one hundred dollars less than my predecessor 
had. That isn’t fair, and it isn’t right. But so 
far from its looking as if I could get an increase, 
the prospect Seems rather that they will make me 
pay for the gas and that sidewalk. I never re- 
covered more than about half of my moving ex- 
penses, as you know, and — and, frankly, I don’t 
know which way to turn. It keeps me miserable 
all the while.” 

“ That’s where you’re wrong,” said Mr. Gor- 
ringe. “ If you let things like that worry you, 
you ’ll keep a sore skin all your life. You take 
my advice and just go ahead your own gait, and 
let other folks do the worrying. They are pretty 
close-fisted here, for a fact, but you can manage 
to rub along somehow. If you should get into 
any real difficulties, why, I guess — ” the lawyer 
paused to smile in a hesitating, significant way, — 
“ I guess some road out can be found all right. 
The main thing is, don’t fret, and don’t allow your 
wife to — to fret either.” 

He stopped abruptly. Theron nodded in re- 
cognition of his amiable tone, and then found the 
nod lengthening itself out into almost a bow as 
179 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the thought spread through his mind that this 
had been nothing more nor less than a promise 
to help him with money if worst came to worst. 
He looked at Levi Gorringe, and said to himself 
that the intuition of women was wonderful. Alice 
had picked him out as a friend of theirs merely by 
seeing him pass the house. 

“ Yes/' he said ; “I am specially anxious to keep 
my wife from worrying. She was surrounded in 
her girlhood by a good deal of what, relatively, we 
should call luxury, and that makes it all the harder 
for her to be a poor minister’s wife. I had quite 
decided to get her a hired girl, come what might, 
but she thinks she ’d rather get on without one. 
Her health is better, I must admit, than it was 
when we came here. She works out in her garden 
a great deal, and that seems to agree with her.” 

“ Octavius is a healthy place, — that ’s generally 
admitted,” replied the lawyer, with indifference. 
He seemed not to be interested in Mrs. Ware’s 
health, but looked intently out through the window 
at the buildings opposite, and drummed with his 
fingers on the arms of his chair. 

Theron made haste to revert to his errand. 
“Of course, your not being in the Quarterly 
Conference,” he said, “ renders certain things 
impossible. But I did n’t know but you might 
have some knowledge of how matters are going, 
what plans the officials of the church had ; they 
seem to have agreed to tell me nothing.” 

180 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

“Well, I have heard this much,” responded 
Gorringe. “ They ’re figuring on getting the 
Soulsbys here to raise the debt and kind o’ shake 
things up generally. I guess that ’s about as good 
as settled. Had n’t you heard of it? ” 

“Not a breath ! ” exclaimed Theron, mourn* 
fUlly. “ Well,” he added upon redection, “ I ’m 
sorry, downright sorry. The debt-raiser seems to 
me about the lowest-down thing we produce. I ’ve 
heard of those Soulsbys ; I saw him indeed once 
at Conference, but I believe she is the head of the 
firm.” 

“ Yes ; she wears the breeches, I understand,” 
said Gorringe. sententiously. 

“ I had hoped,” the young minister began with 
a rueful sigh, “ in fact, I felt quite confident at the 
outset that I could pay off this debt, and put the 
church generally on a new footing, by giving extra 
attention to my pulpit work. It is hardly for me 
to say it, but in other places where I have been, 
my preaching has been rather — rather a feature 
in the town itself. I have always been accustomed 
to attract to our services a good many non- members, 
and that, as you know, helps tremendously from 
a money point of view. But somehow that has 
failed here. I doubt if the average congregations 
are a whit larger now than they were when I came 
in April. I know the collections are not.” 

“No,” commented the lawyer, slowly; “you’ll 
never do anything in that line in Octavius. You 
i8x 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

might, of course, if you were to stay here and 
work hard at it for five or six years — ” 

“ Heaven forbid ! ” groaned Mr. Ware. 

“ Quite so,” put in the other. “The point is 
that the Methodists here are a little set by them- 
selves. I don’t know that they like one another 
specially, but I do know that they are not what 
you might call popular with people outside. Now, 
a new preacher at the Presbyterian church, or even 
the Baptist, — he might have a chance to create 
talk, and make a stir. But Methodist, — no ! 
People who don’t belong won’t come near the 
Methodist church here so long as there ’s any 
other place with a roof on it to go to. Give a 
dog a bad name, you know. Well, the Metho- 
dists here have got a bad name ; and if you could 
preach like Henry Ward Beecher himself you 
would n’t change it, or get folks to come and 
hear you.” 

“ I see what you mean,” Theron responded. 
“ I ’m not particularly surprised myself that Octa- 
vius doesn’t love us, or look to us for intellectual 
stimulation. I myself leave that pulpit more often 
than otherwise feeling like a wet rag, — utterly limp 
and discouraged. But, if you don’t mind my 
speaking of it, you don’t belong, and yet you 
come.” 

It was evident that the lawyer did not mind. 
He spoke freely in reply. “ Oh, yes, I ’ve got 
into the habit of it. I began going when I first 
182 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


came here, and — and so it grew to be natural foi 
me to go. Then, of course, being the only lawyer 
you have, a considerable amount of my business is 
mixed up in one way or another with your mem- 
bership ; you see those are really the things which 
settle a man in a rut, and keep him there.” 

“ I suppose your people were Methodists,” said 
Theron, to fill in the pause, “ and that is how you 
originally started with us.” 

Levi Gorringe shook his head. He leaned back, 
half closed his eyes, put his finger-tips together, 
and almost smiled as if something in retrospect 
pleased and moved him. 

“ No,” he said ; “ I went to the church first to 
see a girl who used to go there. It was long be- 
fore your time. All her family moved away years 
ago. You wouldn’t know any of them. I was 
younger then, and I did n’t know as much as I do 
now. I worshipped the very ground that girl 
walked on, and like a fool I never gave her so 
much as a hint of it. Looking back now, I can 
see that I might have had her if I ’d asked her. 
But I went instead and sat around and looked at 
her at church and Sunday-school and prayer-meet- 
ings Thursday nights, and class- meetings after the 
sermon. She was devoted to religion and church 
work ; and, thinking it would please her, I joined 
the church on probation. Men can fool them- 
selves easier than they can other people. I actu- 
ally believed at the time that I had experienced 
183 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


religion. I felt myself full of all sorts of awaker 
ings of the soul and so forth. But it was really 
that girl. You see I ’m telling you the thing jus' 
as it was. I was very happy. I think it was the 
happiest time of my life. I remember there was 
a love- feast while I was on probation ; and I sat 
down in front, right beside her, and we ate the 
little square chunks of bread and drank the. water 
together, and I held one corner of her hymn-book 
when we stood up and sang. That was the near- 
est I ever got to her, or to full membership in the 
church. That very next week, I think it was, we 
learned that she had got engaged to the minister’s 
son, — a young man who had just become a minister 
himself. They got married, and went away — and 
I — somehow I never took up my membership 
when the six months’ probation was over. That ’s 
how it was.” 

“ It is very interesting,” remarked Theron, 
softly, after a little silence, — “ and very full of 
human nature.” 

“ Well, now you see,” said the lawyer, “ what I 
mean when I say that there has n’t been another 
minister here since, that I should have felt like 
telling this story to. They would n’t have under- 
stood it at all. They would have thought it was 
blasphemy for me to say straight out that what I 
took for experiencing religion was really a girl. 
But you are different. I felt that at once, the first 
time I saw you. In a pulpit or out of it, what / 
184 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


like in a human being is that he should be 
human.” 

“ It pleases me beyond measure that you should 
like me, then.” returned the young minister, with 
frank gratification shining on his face. “The 
world is made all the sweeter and more lovable by 
these — these elements of romance. I am not 
one of those who would wish to see them ban- 
ished or frowned upon. I don’t mind admitting 
to you that there is a good deal in Methodism — 
I mean the strict practice of its letter which you 
find here in Octavius — that is personally distaste- 
ful to me. I read the other day of an English 
bishop who said boldly, publicly, that no modem 
nation could practise the principles laid down in 
the Sermon on the Mount and survive for twenty- 
four hours.” 

“ Ha, ha ! That ’s good ! ” laughed the lawyer. 

“ I felt that it was good, too,” pursued Theron. 
“ I am getting to see a great many things differ- 
ently, here in Octavius. Our Methodist Discipline 
is like the Beatitudes, — very helpful and beautiful 
if treated as spiritual suggestion, but more or less 
of a stumbling-block if insisted upon literally. I 
declare ! ” he added, sitting up in his chair, “ I 
never talked like this to a living soul before in all 
my life. Your confidences were contagious.” 

The Rev. Mr. Ware rose as he spoke, and took 
up his hat. 

“Must you be going?” asked the lawyer, also 
iSS 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


rising. “ Well, I 'm glad I have n’t shocked 
you. Come in oftener when you are passing. 
And if you see anything I can help you in, always 
tell me.” 

The two men shook hands, with an emphatic 
and lingering clasp. 

“ I am glad,” said Theron, “that you didn’t 
stop coming to church just because you lost the 
girl.” 

Levi Gorringe answered the minister’s pleasantry 
with a smile which curled his mustache upward, 
and expanded in little wrinkles at the ends of his 
eyes. “ No,” he said jestingly. “ I ’m death on 
collecting debts ; and I reckon that the church 
still owes me a girl. I ’ll have one yet.” 

So, with merriment the echoes of which pleas- 
antly accompanied Theron down the stairway, the 
two men parted. 



( 


CHAPTER XIII 


Though Time lagged in passing with a slowness 
which seemed born of studied insolence, there did 
arrive at last a day which had something definitive 
about it to Theron’s disturbed and restless mind. 
It was a Thursday, and the prayer- meeting to be 
held that evening would be the last before the 
Quarterly Conference, now only four days off. 

For some reason, the young minister found him- 
self dwelling upon this fact, and investing it with 
importance. But yesterday the Quarterly Confer- 
ence had seemed a long way ahead. To-day 
brought it alarmingly close to hand. He had not 
heretofore regarded the weekly assemblage for 
prayer and song as a thing calling for preparation, 
or for any preliminary thought. Now on this 
Thursday morning he went to his desk after break- 
fast, which was a sign that he wanted the room to 
himself, quite as if he had the task of a weighty 
sermon before him. He sat at the desk all the 
forenoon, doing no writing, it is true, but remem- 
bering every once in a while, when his mind 
turned aside from the book in his hands, that 
there was that prayer- meeting in the evening. 

187.. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Sometimes he reached the point of vaguely won- 
dering why this strictly commonplace affair should 
be forcing itself thus upon his attention. Then, 
with a kind of mental shiver at the recollec- 
tion that this was Thursday, and that the great 
struggle came on Monday, he would go back to 
his book. 

There were a half-dozen volumes on the open 
desk before him. He had taken them out from 
beneath a pile of old “ Sunday-School Advocates ” 
and church magazines, where they had lain hidden 
from Alice’s view most of the week. If there had 
been a locked drawer in the house, he would have 
used it instead to hold these books, which had 
come to him in a neat parcel, which also con- 
tained an amiable note from Dr. Ledsmar, 
recalling a pleasant evening in May, and expres- 
sing the hope that the accompanying works would 
be of some service. Theron had glanced at the 
backs of the uppermost two, and discovered that 
their author was Renan. Then he had hastily put 
the lot in the best place he could think of to 
escape his wife’s observation. 

He realized now that there had been no need 
for this secrecy. Of the other four books, by 
Sayce, Budge, Smith, and Lenormant, three indeed 
revealed themselves to be published under religious 
auspices. As for Renan, he might have known 
that the name would be meaningless to Alice. 
The feeling that he himself was not much wiser in 
188 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


this matter than his wife may have led him to 
pass over the learned text-books on Chaldean 
antiquity, and even the volume of Renan which 
appeared to be devoted to Oriental inscriptions, 
and take up his other book, entitled in the trans- 
lation, “ Recollections of my Youth.” This he 
rather glanced through, at the outset, following 
with a certain inattention the introductory sketches 
and essays, which dealt with an unfamiliar, and, to 
his notion, somewhat preposterous Breton racial 
type. Then, little by little, it dawned upon him 
that there was a connected story in all this; 
and suddenly he came upon it, out in the open, as 
it were. It was the story of how a deeply devout 
young man, trained from his earliest boyhood for 
the sacred office, and desiring passionately nothing 
but to be worthy of it, came to a point where, at 
infinite cost of pain to himself and of anguish to 
those dearest to him, he had to declare that he 
could no longer believe at all in revealed religion. 

Theron Ware read this all with an excited inter- 
est which no book had ever stirred in him before. 
Much of it he read over and over again, to make 
sure that he penetrated everywhere the husk of 
French habits of thought and Catholic methods in 
which the kernel was wrapped. He broke off mid- 
way in this part of the book to go out to the kitchen 
to dinner, and began the meal in silence. To 
Alice’s questions he replied briefly that he was 
preparing himself for the evening’s prayer-meeting. 

189 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

She lifted her brows in such frank surprise at this 
that he made a further and somewhat rambling 
explanation about having again taken up the work 
on his book, — the book about Abraham. 

“ I thought you said you ’d given that up alto- 
gether,” she remarked. 

“ Well,” he said, “ I was discouraged about it 
for a while. But a man never does anything big 
without getting discouraged over and over again 
while he ’s doing it. I don’t say now that I shall 
write precisely that book, — I’m merely reading 
scientific works about the period, just now, — but if 
not that, I shall write some other book. Else how 
will you get that piano ? ” he added, with an attempt 
at a smile. 

“ I thought you had given that up, too ! ” she 
replied ruefully. Then before he could speak, she 
went on : “ Never mind the piano ; that can wait. 
What I ’ve got on my mind just now is n’t piano ; 
it ’s potatoes. Do you know, I saw some the other 
day at Rasbach’s, splendid potatoes, — these are 
some of them, — and fifteen cents a bushel cheaper 
than those dried-up old things Brother Barnum 
keeps, and so I bought two bushels. And Sister 
Barnum met me on the street this morning, and 
threw it in my face that the Discipline commands 
us to trade with each other. Is there any such 
command? ” 

“ Yes,” said the husband. “ It *s Section 33. 
Don’t you remember? I looked it up in Tyre. 
v 190, 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


We are to ‘ evidence our desire of salvation by doing 
good, especially to them that are of the household 
of faith, or groaning so to be ; by employing them 
preferably to others ; buying one of another ; help- 
ing each other in business/ — and so on. Yes, it ’s 
all there.” 

“Well, I told her I did n’t believe it was,” put 
in Alice, “ and I said that even if it was, there ought 
to be another section about selling potatoes to their 
minister for more than they ’re worth, — potatoes 
that turn all green when you boil them, too. I 
believe I ’ll read up that old Discipline myself, 
and see if it has n’t got some things that I can talk 
back with.” 

“The very section before that, Number 32, en- 
joins members against ‘ uncharitable or unprofitable 
conversation, — particularly speaking evil of magis- 
trates or ministers.’ You ’d have ’em there, I think.” 
Theron had begun cheerfully enough, but the care- 
worn, preoccupied look returned now to his face. 
“ I ’m sorry if we ’ve fallen out with the Barnums/’ 
he said. “ His brother-in-law, Davis, the Sunday- 
school superintendent, is a member of the Quarterly 
Conference, you know, and I ’ve been hoping that 
he was on my side. I ’ve been taking a good deal 
of pains to make up to him.” 

He ended with a sigh, the pathos of which im- 
pressed Alice. “ If you think it will do any good,” 
she volunteered, “ I ’ll go and call on the Davises 
this very afternoon. I ’m sure to find her at home, 

19 1 . 


lAE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

— she ’s tied hand and foot with that brood of 
hers, — and you ’d better give me some of that candy 
f or them.” 

Theron nodded his approval and thanks, and 
relapsed into silence. When the meal was over, he 
brought out the confectionery to his wife, and with- 
out a word went back to that remarkable book. 

When Alice returned toward the close of day, to 
prepare the simple tea which was always laid a half- 
hour earlier on Thursdays and Sundays, she found 
her husband where she had left him, still busy with 
those new scientific works. She recounted to him 
some incidents of her call upon Mrs. Davis, as she 
took off her hat and put on the big kitchen apron, — 
how pleased Mrs. Davis seemed to be ; how her 
affection for her sister-in-law, the grocer’s wife, 
disclosed itself to be not even skin-deep ; how the 
children leaped upon the candy as if they had never 
seen any before ; and how, in her belief, Mr. Davis 
would be heart and soul on Theron’s side at the 
Conference. 

To her surprise, the young minister seemed not 
at all interested. He hardly looked at her during 
her narrative, but reclined in the easy -chair with 
his head thrown back, and an abstracted gaze wan- 
dering aimlessly about the ceiling. When she 
avowed her faith in the Sunday-school superinten- 
dent’s loyal partisanship, which she did with a par- 
donable pride in having helped to make it secure, 
her husband even closed his eyes, and moved 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


his head with a gesture which plainly bespoke 
indifference. 

“ I expected you *d be tickled to death,” she 
remarked, with evident disappointment. 

“ I ’ve a bad headache,” he explained, after a 
minute’s pause. 

“ No wonder ! ” Alice rejoined, sympathetically 
enough, but with a note of reproof as well. “ What 
can you expect, staying cooped up in here all day 
long, poring over those books? People are all the 
while remarking that you study too much. I tell 
them, of course, that you ’re a great hand for read- 
ing, and always were ; but I think myself it would 
be better if you got out more, and took more 
exercise, and saw people. You know lots and 
slathers more than they do now, or ever will, if 
you never opened another book.” 

Theron regarded her with an expression which 
she had never seen on his face before. “You 
don’t realize what you are saying,” he replied 
slowly. He sighed as he added, with increased 
gravity, “ I am the most ignorant man alive ! ” 

Alice began a little laugh of wifely incredulity, 
and then let it die away as she recognized that he 
was really troubled and sad in his mind. She bent 
over to kiss him lightly on the brow, and tiptoed 
her way out into the kitchen. 

“ I believe I will let you make my excuses at 
the prayer- meeting this evening,” he said all at 
once, as the supper came to an end. He had 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


eaten next to nothing during the meal, and had 
sat in a sort of brown- study from which Alice kindly 
forbore to arouse him. “ I don’t know — I hardly 
feel equal to it. They won’t take it amiss — for 
once — if you explain to them that I — I am not 
at all well.” 

“ Oh, I do hope you ’re not coming down with 
anything ! ” Alice had risen too, and was gazing 
at him with a solicitude the tenderness of which at 
once comforted, and in some obscure way jarred 
on his nerves. “ Is there anything I can do — or 
shall I go for a doctor? We’ve got mustard in 
the house, and senna — I think there ’s some senna 
left — and Jamaica ginger.” 

Theron shook his head wearily at her. “ Oh, no, 
— no ! ” he expostulated. “ It is n’t anything that 
needs drugs, or doctors either. It ’s just mental 
worry and fatigue, that ’s all. An evening’s quiet 
rest in the big chair, and early to bed, — that will 
fix me up all right.” 

“ But you ’ll read ; and that will make your 
head worse,” said Alice. 

“ No, I won’t read any more,” he promised her, 
walking slowly into the sitting-room, and settling 
himself in the big chair, the while she brought out 
a pillow from the adjoining best bedroom, and 
adjusted it behind his head. “ That ’s nice ! I ’ll 
just lie quiet here, and perhaps doze a little till you 
come back. I feel in the mood for the rest ; it 
will do me all sorts of good.” 

i94 , 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


He closed his eyes ; and Alice, regarding his up- 
turned face anxiously, decided that already it looked 
more at peace than awhile ago. 

“ Well, I hope you ’ll be better when I get back,’* 
she said, as she began preparations for the evening 
service. These consisted in combing stiffly back 
the strands of light- brown hair which, during the 
day, had exuberantly loosened themselves over her 
temples into something almost like curls ; in fas- 
tening down upon this rebellious hair a plain brown- 
straw bonnet, guiltless of all ornament save a bind- 
ing ribbon of dull umber hue ; and in putting on a 
thin dark-gray shawl and a pair of equally subdued 
lisle -thread gloves. Thus attired, she made a mis- 
chievous little grimace of dislike at her puritanical 
image in the looking-glass over the mantel, and 
then turned to announce her departure. 

“ Well, I ’m off,” she said. Theron opened his 
eyes to take in this figure of his wife dressed for 
prayer-meeting, and then closed them again 
abruptly. “All right,” he murmured, and then 
he heard the door shut behind her. 

Although he had been alone all day, there seemed 
to be quite a unique value and quality in this 
present solitude. He stretched out his legs on the 
opposite chair, and looked lazily about him, with 
the feeling that at last he had secured some leisure, 
and could think undisturbed to his heart’s content. 
There were nearly two hours of unbroken quiet be- 
fore him ; and the mere fact of his having stepped 
i9S 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


aside from the routine of his duty to procure it 
marked it in his thoughts as a special occasion, 
which ought in the nature of things to yield more 
than the ordinary harvest of mental profit. 

Theron’s musings were broken in upon from 
time to time by Fumbling outbursts of hymn-singing 
from the church next door. Surely, he said to 
himself, there could be no other congregation in 
the Conference, or in all Methodism, which sang so 
badly as these Octavians did. The noise, as it 
came to him now and again, divided itself familiarly 
into a main strain of hard, high, sharp, and tinny 
female voices, with three or four concurrent and 
clashing branch strains of part-singing by men who 
did not know how. How well he already knew 
these voices ! Through two wooden walls he 
could detect the conceited and pushing note of 
Brother Lovejoy, who tried always to drown the 
rest out, and the lifeless, unmeasured weight of 
shrill clamor which Sister Barnum hurled into every 
chorus, half closing her eyes and sticking out her 
chin as she did so. They drawled their hymns too, 
these people, till Theron thought he understood 
that injunction in the Discipline against singing too 
slowly. It had puzzled him heretofore ; now he 
felt that it must have been meant in prophecy for 
Octavius. 

It was impossible not to recall in contrast that 
other church music he had heard, a month before, 
and the whole atmosphere of that other pastoral 
196 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


sitting-room, from which he had listened to it. 
The startled and crowded impressions of that 
strange evening had been lying hidden in his mind 
all this while, driven into a corner by the pressure 
of more ordinary, every-day matters. They came 
forth now, and passed across his brain, — no longer 
confusing and distorted, but in orderly and intelli- 
gible sequence. Their earlier effect had been one 
of frightened fascination. Now he looked them 
over calmly as they lifted themselves, one by one, 
and found himself not shrinking at all, or evading 
anything, but dwelling upon each in turn as a 
natural and welcome part of the most important 
experience of his life. 

The young minister had arrived, all at once, at 
this conclusion. He did not question at all the 
means by which he had reached it. Nothing was 
clearer to his mind than the conclusion itself, — 
that his meeting with the priest and the doctor was 
the turning-point in his career. They had lifted 
him bodily out of the slough of ignorance, of con- 
tact with low minds and sordid, narrow things, and 
put him on solid ground. This book he had been 
reading — this gentle, tender, lovable book, which 
had as much true piety in it as any devotional 
book he had ever read, and yet, unlike all devo- 
tional books, put its foot firmly upon everything 
which could not be proved in human reason to be 
true — must be merely one of a thousand which 
men like Father Forbes and Dr. Ledsmar knew by 
*97 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


heart. The very thought that he was on the way 
now to know them, too, made Theron tremble. 
The prospect wooed him, and he thrilled in re- 
sponse, with the wistful and delicate eagerness of a 
young lover. 

Somehow, the fact that the priest and the doc- 
tor were not religious men, and that this book 
which had so impressed and stirred him was noth- 
ing more than Renan’s recital of how he, too, 
ceased to be a religious man, did not take a form 
which Theron could look square in the face. It 
wore the shape, instead, of a vague premise that 
there were a great many different kinds of religions, 
— the past and dead races had multiplied these in 
their time literally into thousands, — and that each 
no doubt had its central support of truth some- 
where for the good men who were in it, and that 
to call one of these divine and condemn all the 
others was a part fit only for untutored bigots. 
Renan had formally repudiated Catholicism, yet 
could write in his old age with the deepest filial 
affection of the Mother Church he had quitted. 
Father Forbes could talk coolly about the “ Christ- 
myth ” without even ceasing to be a priest, and 
apparently a very active and devoted priest. Evi- 
dently there was an intellectual world, a world of 
culture and grace, of lofty thoughts and the inspir- 
ing communion of real knowledge, where creeds 
were not of importance, and where men asked one 
another, not “ Is your soul saved?” but “ Is your 
*98 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


mind well furnished? ” Theron had the sensation 
of having been invited to become a citizen of this 
world. The thought so dazzled him that his im- 
pulses were dragging him forward to take the new 
oath of allegiance before he had had time to 
reflect upon what it was he was abandoning. 

The droning of the Doxology from the church 
outside stirred Theron suddenly out of his revery. 
It had grown quite dark, and he rose and lit the 
gas. “ Blest be the Tie that Binds,” they were 
singing. He paused, with hand still in air, to 
listen. That well-worn phrase arrested his atten- 
tion, and gave itself a new meaning. He was 
bound to those people, it was true, but he could 
never again harbor the delusion that the tie be- 
tween them was blessed. There was vaguely 
present in his mind the consciousness that other 
ties were loosening as well. Be that as it might, 
one thing was certain. He had passed definitely 
beyond pretending to himself that there was any- 
thing spiritually in common between him and the 
Methodist Church of Octavius. The necessity of 
his keeping up the pretence with others rose on 
the instant like a looming shadow before his men- 
tal vision. He turned away from it, and bent his 
brain to think of something else. 

The noise of Alice opening the front door came 
as a pleasant digression. A second later it became 
clear from the sound of voices that she had brought 
some one back with her, and Theron hastily 
*99 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


stretched himself out again in the armchair, with 
his head back in the pillow, and his feet on the 
other chair. He had come mighty near forgetting 
that he was an invalid, and he protected himself 
the further now by assuming an air of lassitude 
verging upon prostration. 

“ Yes ; there ’s a light burning. It ’s all right,” 
he heard Alice say. She entered the room, and 
Theron’s head was too bad to permit him to turn 
it, and see who her companion was. 

“ Theron dear,” Alice began, “ I knew you ’d be 
glad to see her, even if you were out of sorts ; and 
I persuaded her just to run in for a minute. Let 
me introduce you to Sister Soulsby. Sister Soulsby, 
— my husband.” 

The Rev. Mr. Ware sat upright with an ener- 
getic start, and fastened upon the stranger a look 
which conveyed anything but the satisfaction his 
wife had been so sure about. It was at the first 
blush an undisguised scowl ; and only some fleeting 
memory of that reflection about needing now to 
dissemble, prevented him from still frowning as he 
rose to his feet, and perfunctorily held out his hand. 

“ Delighted, I ’m sure,” he mumbled. Then, 
looking up, he discovered that Sister Soulsby knew 
he was not delighted, and that she seemed not to 
mind in the least. 

“As your good lady said, I just ran in for a 
moment,” she remarked, shaking his limp hand 
with a brisk, business-like grasp, and dropping it. 


200 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ I hate bothering sick people, but as we ’re to be 
thrown together a good deal this next week or so, 
I thought I ’d like to lose no time in saying 
1 howdy.’ I won’t keep you up now. Your wife 
has been sweet enough to ask me to move my 
trunk over here in the morning, so that you ’ll see 
enough of me and to spare.” 

Theron looked falteringly into her face, as he 
strove for words which should sufficiently mask 
the disgust this intelligence stirred within him. 
A debt- raiser in the town was bad enough ! A 
debt-raiser quartered in the very parsonage ! — he 
ground his teeth to think of it. 

Alice read his hesitation aright. “ Sister Soulsby 
went to the hotel,” she hastily put in ; “ and Loren 
Pierce was after her to come and stay at his house, 
and / ventured to tell her that I thought we could 
make her more comfortable here.” She accom- 
panied this by so daring a grimace and nod that 
her husband woke up to the fact that a point in 
Conference politics was involved. 

He squeezed a doubtful smile upon his features. 
“ We shall both do our best,” he said. It was not 
easy, but he forced increasing amiability into his 
glance and tone. “ Is Brother Soulsby here, too? ” 
he asked. 

The debt- raiser shook her head, — again the 
prompt, decisive movement, so like a busy man of 
affairs. “ No,” she answered. “ He ’s doing sup- 
ply down on the Hudson this week, but he ’ll be 


201 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


here m time for the Sunday morning love- feast. 
I always like to come on ahead, and see how the 
land lies. Well, good-night ! Your head will be 
all right in the morning.” 

Precisely what she meant by this assurance, 
Theron did not attempt to guess. He received 
her adieu, noted the masterful manner in which 
she kissed his wife, and watched her pass out into 
the hall, with the feeling uppermost that this was a 
person who decidedly knew her way about. Much 
as he was prepared to dislike her, and much as he 
detested the vulgar methods her profession typi- 
fied, he could not deny that she seemed a very 
capable sort of woman. 

This mental concession did not prevent his 
fixing upon Alice, when she returned to the room, 
a glance of obvious disapproval. 

“ Theron,” she broke forth, to anticipate his 
reproach, “ I did it for the best. The Pierces 
would have got her if I had n’t cut in. I thought 
it would help to have her on our side. And, be- 
sides, I like her. She ’s the first sister I Ve seen 
since we Ve been in this hole that ’s had a kind 
word for me — or — or sympathized with me ! 
And — and — if you ’re going to be offended — I 
shall cry ! ” 

There were real tears on her lashes, ready to 
make good the threat. “ Oh, I guess I would n’t,” 
said Theron, with an approach to his old, half- play- 
ful manner. “ If you like her, that ’s the chief thing.” 

2Q2 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Alice shook her tear-drops away. “ No,” she 
replied, with a wistful smile ; “ the chief thing is to 
have her like you. She ’s as smart as a steel trap, 
— that woman is, — and if she took the notion, I 
believe she could help get us a better place.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


The ensuing week went by with a buzz *nd 4 
whirl, circling about Theron Ware’s dia ^ con- 
sciousness like some huge, impalpable teetctum 
sent spinning under Sister Soulsby’s resolute hands. 
Whenever his vagrant memory recurred to it, in 
affer months, he began by marvelling, and ended 
with a shudder of repulsion. 

It was a week crowded with events, which 
seemed to him to shoot past so swiftly that in 
effect they came all of a heap. He never essayed 
the task, in retrospect, of arranging them in their 
order of sequence. They had, however, a definite 
and interdependent chronology which it is worth 
the while to trace. 

Mrs. Soulsby brought her trunk round to the 
parsonage bright and early on Friday morning, and 
took up her lodgement in the best bedroom, and 
her headquarters in the house at large, with a 
cheerful and business-like manner. She desirec 
nothing so much, she said, as that people should 
not put themselves out on her account, or allow 
her to get in their way. She appeared to mean 
this, too, and to have very good ideas about 
securing its realization. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


During both Friday and the following day, in- 
deed, Theron saw her only at the family meals. 
There she displayed a hearty relish for all that 
was set before her which quite won Mrs. Ware’s 
heart, and though she talked rather more than 
Theron found himself expecting from a woman, 
he could not deny that her conversation was both 
seemly and entertaining. She had evidently been 
a great traveller, and referred to things she had 
seen in Savannah or Montreal or Los Angeles in 
as matter-of-fact fashion as he could have spoken 
of a visit to Tecumseh. Theron asked her many 
questions about these and other far-off cities, and 
her answers were all so pat and showed so keen 
and clear an eye that he began in spite of himself 
to think of her with a certain admiration. 

She in turn plied him with inquiries about the 
principal pew-holders and members of his congre- 
gation, — their means, their disposition, and the 
measure of their devotion. She put these queries 
with such intelligence, and seemed to assimilate his 
replies with such an alert understanding, that the 
young minister was spurred to put dashes of char- 
acter in his descriptions, and set forth the idio- 
syncrasies and distinguishing ear-marks of his flock 
with what he felt afterward might have been too 
free a tongue. But at the time her fine air of 
appreciation led him captive. He gossiped about 
his parishioners as if he enjoyed it. He made a 
specially happy thumb-nail sketch for her of one of 
205 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

his trustees, Erastus Winch, the loud-mouthed, 
ostentatiously jovial, and really cold-hearted cheese- 
buyer. She was particularly interested in hearing 
about this man. The personality of Winch seemed 
to have impressed her, and she brought the talk 
back to him more than once, and prompted The- 
ron to the very threshold of indiscretion in his 
confidences on the subject. 

Save at meal-times, Sister Soulsby spent the two 
days out around among the Methodists of Octa- 
vius. She had little or nothing to say about what 
she thus saw and heard, but used it as the basis for 
still further inquiries. She told more than once, 
however, of how she had been pressed here or 
there to stay to dinner or supper, and how she had 
excused herself. “ I ’ve knocked about too much,” 
she would explain to the Wares, “ not to fight shy 
of random country cooking. When I find such a 
born cook as you are — well — I know when I ’m 
well off.” Alice flushed with pleased pride at this, 
and Theron himself felt that their visitor showed 
great good sense. By Saturday noon, the two 
women were calling each other by their first names. 
Theron learned with a certain interest that Sister 
Soulsby’s Christian name was Candace. 

It was only natural that he should give even 
more thought to her than to her quaint and unfa- 
miliar old Ethiopian name. She was undoubtedly 
a very smart woman. To his surprise she had never 
introduced in her talk any of the stock religious 
206 __ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and devotional phrases which official Methodists 
so universally employed in mutual converse. She 
might have been an insurance agent, or a school- 
teacher, visiting in a purely secular household, so 
little parade of cant was there about her. 

He caught himself wondering how old she was. 
She seemed to have been pretty well over the 
whole American continent, and that must take 
years of time. Perhaps, however, the exertion of 
so much travel would tend to age one in appear- 
ance. Her eyes were still youthful, — decidedly 
wise eyes, but still juvenile. They had sparkled 
with almost girlish merriment at some of his jokes. 
She turned them about a good deal when she 
spoke, making their glances fit and illustrate the 
things she said. He had never met any one whose 
eyes played so constant and prominent a part in 
their owner’s conversation. Theron had never seen 
a play ; but he had encountered the portraits of 
famous queens of the drama several times in illus- 
trated papers or shop windows, and it occurred to 
him that some of the more marked contortions of 
Sister Soulsby’s eyes — notably a trick she had 
of rolling them swiftly round and plunging them, 
so to speak, into an intent, yearning, one might 
almost say devouring, gaze at the speaker — were 
probably employed by eminent actresses like 
Ristori and Fanny Davenport. 

The rest of Sister Soulsby was undoubtedly sub- 
ordinated in interest to those eyes of hers. Some- 
207 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


times her face seemed to be reviving temporarily 
a comeliness which had been constant in former 
days ; then again it would look decidedly, organ- 
ically, plain. It was the worn and loose-skinned 
face of a nervous, middle-aged woman, who had 
had more than her share of trouble, and drank too 
much tea. She wore the collar of her dress rather 
low ; and Theron found himself wondering at this, 
because, though long and expansive, her neck cer- 
tainly showed more cords and cavities than con- 
sorted with his vague ideal of statuesque beauty. 
Then he wondered at himseif for thinking about it, 
and abruptly reined up his fancy, only to find that 
it was playing with speculations as to whether her 
yellowish complexion was due to that tea-drinking 
or came to her as a legacy of Southern blood. 

He knew that she was born in the South because 
she said so. From the same source he learned 
that her father had been a wealthy planter, who 
was ruined by the war, and sank into a premature 
grave under the weight of his accumulated losses. 
The large dark rings around her eyes grew deeper 
still in their shadows when she told about this, 
and her ordinarily sharp voice took on a mellow 
cadence, with a soft, drawling accent, turning »’s 
into tf’s, and having no r* s to speak of. Theron 
had imbibed somewhere in early days the convic- 
tion that the South was the land of romance, of 
cavaliers and gallants and black eyes flashing 
behind mantillas and outspread fans, and some- 
20$ 


THE DAMNATION OF TIIERON WARE 


how when Sister Soulsby used this intonation she 
suggested all these things. 

But almost all her talk was in another key, — 
a brisk, direct, idiomatic manner of speech, with 
an intonation hinting at no section in particular. 
It was merely that of the city-dweller as distin- 
guished from the rustic. She was of about Alice’s 
height, perhaps a shade taller. It did not escape 
the attention of the Wares that she wore clothes 
of a more stylish cut and a livelier arrangement 
of hues than any Alice had ever dared own, even 
in lax-minded Tyre. The two talked of this in 
their room on Friday night ; and Theron explained 
that congregations would tolerate things of this 
sort with a stranger which would be sharply re- 
sented in the case of local folk whom they con- 
trolled. It was on this occasion that Alice in 
tu.n told Theron she was sure Mrs. Soulsby had 
false teeth, — a confidence which she immediately 
regretted as an act of treachery to her sex. 

On Saturday afternoon, toward evening, Brother 
Soulsby arrived, and was guided to the parsonage 
by his wife, who had gone to the depot to meet 
him. They must have talked over the situation 
pretty thoroughly on the way, for by the time the 
new-comer had washed his face and hands and 
put on a clean collar, Sister Soulsby was ready to 
announce her plan of campaign in detail. 

Her husband was a man of small stature and, 
like herself, of uncertain age. He had a gentle, 
14 209 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


if rather dry, clean-shaven face, and wore his dust- 
colored hair long behind. His little figure was 
clad in black clothes of a distinctively clerical 
fashion, and he had a white neck-cloth neatly tied 
under his collar. The Wares noted that he looked 
clean and amiable rather than intellectually or spirit- 
ually powerful, as he took the vacant seat between 
theirs, and joined them in concentrating attention 
upon Mrs. Soulsby. 

This lady, holding herself erect and alert on 
the edge of the low, big easy-chair, had the air 
of presiding over a meeting. 

“ My idea is,” she began, with an easy impli- 
cation that no one else’s idea was needed, “ that 
your Quarterly Conference, when it meets on 
Monday, must be adjourned to Tuesday. We 
will have the people all out to-morrow morning to 
love-feast, and announcement can be made there, 
and at the morning service afterward, that a series 
of revival meetings are to be begun that same 
evening. Mr. Soulsby and I can take charge in 
the evening, and we ’ll see to it that that packs the 
house, — fills the church to overflowing Monday 
evening. Then we ’ll quietly turn the meeting into 
a debt-raising convention, before they know where 
they are, and we ’ll wipe off the best part of the 
load. Now, don’t you see,” she turned her eyes 
full upon Theron as she spoke, “you want to 
hold your Quarterly Conference after this money ’s 
been raised, not before.” 


210 _ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ I see what you mean,” Mr. Ware responded 
gravely. “ But — ” 

“ But what ! ” Sister Soulsby interjected, with 
vivacity, 

"Well,” said Theron, picking his words, “in 
the first place, it rests with the Presiding Elder to 
say whether an adjournment can be made until 
Tuesday, not with me.” 

“ That ’s all right. Leave that to me,” said the 
lady. 

“ In the second place,” Theron went on, still 
more hesitatingly, “there seems a certain — what 
shall I say? — indirection in — in — ” 

“ In getting them together for a revival, and 
springing a debt-raising on them?” Sister Soulsby 
put in. “ Why, man alive, that ’s the best part of 
it. You ought to be getting some notion by this 
time what these Octavius folks of yours are like. 
I ’ve only been here two days, but I ’ve got their 
measure down to an allspice. Supposing you 
were to announce to-morrow that the debt was to 
be raised Monday. How many men with bank- 
accounts would turn up, do you think? You could 
put them all in your eye, sir, — all in your eye ! ” 

“Very possibly you ’re right,” faltered the young 
minister. 

“ Right? Why, of course I ’m right,” she said, 
with placid confidence. “You’ve got to take 
folks as you find them; and you’ve got to find 
them the best way you can. One place can be 
—^211 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


worked, managed, in one way, and another needs 
quite a different way, and both ways would be 
dead frosts — complete failures — in a third.” 

Brother Soulsby coughed softly here, and shuf- 
fled his feet for an instant on the carpet. His 
wife resumed her remarks with slightly abated 
animation, and at a slower pace. 

“ My experience,” she said, “ has shown me 
that the Apostle was right. To properly serve 
the cause, one must be all things to all men. I 
have known very queer things indeed turn out to 
be means of grace. You simply can't get along 
without some of the wisdom of the serpent. We 
are commanded to have it, for that matter. And 
now, speaking of that, do you know when the 
Presiding Elder arrives in town to-day, and where 
he is going to eat supper and sleep?” 

Theron shook his head. “All I know is he 
isn’t likely to come here,” he said, and added 
sadly, “I ’m afraid he ’s not an admirer of 
mine.” 

“ Perhaps that ’s not all his fault,” commented 
Sister Soulsby. “ I ’ll tell you something. He 
came in on the same train as my husband, and 
that old trustee Pierce of yours was waiting for 
him with his buggy, and I saw like a flash what 
was in the wind, and the minute the train stopped 
I caught the Presiding Elder, and invited him in 
your name to come right here and stay; told 
him you and Alice were just set on his coming, — 
212 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

wouldn’t take no for an answer. Of course he 
could n’t come, — I knew well enough he had 
promised old Pierce, — but we got in our invitation 
anyway, and it won’t do you any harm. Now, 
that ’s what I call having some gumption, — wisdom 
of the serpent, and so on.” 

“ I ’m sure,” remarked Alice, “ I should have 
been mortified to death if he had come. We lost 
the extension-leaf to our table in moving, and four 
is all it ’ll seat decently.” 

Sister Soulsby smiled winningly into the wife’s 
honest face. “ Don’t you see, dear,” she ex- 
plained patiently, “ I only asked him because I 
knew he could n’t come. A little butter spreads 
a long way, if it ’s only intelligently warmed.” 

“ It was certainly very ingenious of you,” Theron 
began almost stiffly. Then he yielded to the 
humanities, and with a kindling smile added, 
“And it was as kind as kind could be. I’m 
afraid your ’re wrong about it ’s doing me any good, 
but I can see how well you meant it, and I ’ra 
grateful.” 

“ We could have sneaked in the kitchen table, 
perhaps, while he was out in the garden, and put 
on the extra long tablecloth,” interjected Alice, 
musingly. 

Sister Soulsby smiled again at Sister Ware, but 
without any words this time ; and Alice on the 
instant rose, with the remark that she must be 
goingout to see about supper. 

211 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ I ’m going to insist on coming out to help 
you,” Mrs. Soulsby declared, “ as soon as I ’ve 
talked over one little matter with your husband. 
Oh, yes, you must let me this time. I insist ! ” 

As the kitchen door closed behind Mrs. Ware, a 
swift and apparently significant glance shot its 
way across from Sister Soulsby’s roving, eloquent 
eyes to the calmer and smaller gray orbs of her 
husband. He rose to his feet, made some little 
explanation about being a gardener himself, and 
desiring to inspect more closely some rhododen- 
drons he had noticed in the garden, and forth- 
with moved decorously out by the other door into 
the front hall. They heard his footsteps on the 
gravel beneath the window before Mrs. Soulsby 
spoke again. 

“ You ’re right about the Presiding Elder, and 
you ’re wrong,” she said. “ He is n’t what one 
might call precisely in love with you. Oh, I know 
the story, — how you got into debt at Tyre, and he 
stepped in and insisted on your being denied 
Tecumseh and sent here instead.” 

“ He was responsible for that, then, was he ? ” 
broke in Theron, with contracted brows. 

“ Why, don’t you make any effort to find out 
anything at all?” she asked pertly enough, but 
with such obvious good-nature that he could not 
but have pleasure in her speech. “ Why, of course 
he did it ! Who else did you suppose ? ” 

“ Well,” said the young minister, despondently, 
214 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ if he ’s as much against me as all that, I might as 
well hang up my fiddle and go home.” 

Sister Soulsby gave a little involuntary groan of 
impatience. She bent forward, and, lifting her 
eyes, rolled them at him in a curve of downward 
motion which suggested to his fancy the image 
of two eagles in a concerted pounce upon a 
lamb. 

“My friend,” she began, with a new note o. 
impressiveness in her voice, “ if you ’ll pardon my 
saying it, you have n’t got the spunk of a mouse. 
If you ’re going to lay down, and let everybody 
trample over you just as they please, you’re 
right ! You might as well go home. But now 
here, this is what I wanted to say to you : Do 
you just keep your hands off these next few 
days, and leave this whole thing to me. I ’ll 
pull it into shipshape for you. No — wait a 
minute — ■ don’t interrupt now. I have taken a 
liking to you. You ’ve got brains, and you ’ve 
got human nature in you, and heart. What 
you lack is sabe , — common-sense. You’ll get 
that, too, in time, and meanwhile I ’m not going 
to stand by and see you cut up and fed to the dogs 
for want of it. I ’ll get you through this scrape, 
and put you on your feet again, right-side-up-with 
care, because, as I said, I like you. I like youi 
wife, too, mind. She ’s a good, honest little soul, 
and she worships the very ground you tread on. 
Of course, as long as people will marry in theij 
215 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


teens, the wrong people will get yoked up together 
But that ’s neither here nor there. She *s a kind, 
sweet little body, and she ’s devoted to you, and 
it is n’t every intellectual man that gets even that 
much. But now it ’s a go, is it ? You promise to 
keep quiet, do you, and leave the whole show ab- 
solutely to me? Shake hands on it.” 

Sister Soulsby had risen, and stood now holding 
out her hand in a frank, manly fashion. Theron 
looked at the hand, and made mental notes that 
there were a good many veins discernible on the 
small wrist, and that the forearm seemed to swell 
out more than would have been expected in a 
woman producing such a general effect of lean- 
ness. He caught the shine of a thin bracelet- 
band of gold under the sleeve. A delicate, sig- 
nificant odor just hinted its presence in the air 
about this outstretched arm, — something which 
was not a perfume, yet deserved as gracious a 
name. 

He rose to his feet, and took the proffered hand 
with a deliberate gesture, as if he had been cau- 
tiously weighing all the possible arguments for and 
against this momentous compact. 

“ I promise,” he said gravely, and the two palms 
squeezed themselves together in an earnest clasp. 

“ Right you are,” exclaimed the lady, once more 
with cheery vivacity. “ Mind, when it’s all over, 
I ’m going to give you a good, serious, downright 
talking to, — a regular hoeing-over. I ’m not sure I 
216 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

sha’n’t give you a sound shaking into the bargain. 
You need it. And now I ’m going out to help 
Alice” 

The Reverend Mr. Ware remained standing after 
his new friend had left the room, and his medita^ 
tive face wore an even unusual air of abstraction. 
He strolled aimlessly over, after a time, to the 
desk by the window, and stood there looking out 
at the slight figure of Brother Soulsby, who was 
bending over and attentively regarding some pink 
blossoms on a shrub through what seemed to be a 
pocket magnifying-glass. 

What remained uppermost in his mind was not 
this interesting woman’s confident pledge of cham- 
pionship in his material difficulties. He found 
himself dwelling instead upon her remark about 
the incongruous results of early marriages. He 
wondered idly if the little man in the white tie, 
fussing out there over that rhododendron-bush, had 
Igured in her thoughts as an example of these 
evils. Then he reflected that they had been men- 
tioned in clear relation to talk about Alice. 

Now that he faced this question, it was as if 
he had been consciously ignoring and putting it 
aside for a long time. How was it, he asked him- 
self now, that Alice, who had once seemed so bright 
and keen-witted, who had in truth started out im- 
measurably his superior in swiftness of apprehen- 
sion and readiness in humorous quips and conceits, 
should have grown so dull? For she was undoubt- 
217 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


edly slow to understand things nowadays. Her 
absurd lugging in of the extension-table problem, 
when the great strategic point of that invitation 
foisted upon the Presiding Elder came up, was 
only the latest sample of a score of these heavy- 
minded exhibitions that recalled themselves to 
him. And outsiders were apparently beginning 
to notice it. He knew by intuition what those 
phrases, “good, honest little soul” and “kind, 
sweet little body ” signified, when another woman 
used them to a husband about his wife. The very 
employment of that word “ little ” was enough, con- 
sidering that there was scarcely more than a hair’s 
difference between Mrs. Soulsby and Alice, and that 
they were both rather tall than otherwise, as the 
stature of women went. 

What she had said about the chronic misfor- 
tunes of intellectual men in such matters gave 
added point to those meaning phrases. Nobody 
could deny that geniuses and men of conspicu- 
ous talent had as a rule, all through history, con- 
tracted unfortunate marriages. In almost every 
case where their wives were remembered at all, it 
was on account of their abnormal stupidity, or bad 
temper, or something of that sort. Take Xantippe, 
for example, and Shakespeare’s wife, and — and 
— well, there was Byron, and Bulwer-Lytton, and 
ever so many others. 

Of course there was nothing to be done about it. 
These things happened, and one could only put 
218 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

the best possible face on them, and live one’s 
appointed life as patiently and contentedly as 
might be. And Alice undoubtedly merited all 
the praise which had been so generously bestowed 
upon her. She was good and honest and kindly, 
and there could be no doubt whatever as to her 
utter devotion to him. These were tangible, 
solid qualities, which must always secure respect 
for her. It was true that she no longer seemed 
to be very popular among people. He questioned 
whether men, for instance, like Father Forbes and 
Dr. Ledsmar would care much about her. Vis- 
ions of the wifeless and academic calm in which 
these men spent their lives — an existence conse- 
crated to literature and knowledge and familiarity 
with all the loftiest and noblest thoughts of the 
past — rose and enveloped him in a cloud of de- 
pression. No such lot would be his ! He must 
labor along among ignorant and spiteful narrow- 
minded people to the end of his days, pocketing 
their insults and fawning upon the harsh hands of 
jealous nonentities who happened to be his official 
masters, just to keep a roof over his head — or 
rather Alice’s. He must sacrifice everything to 
this, — - his ambitions, his passionate desires to do 
real good in the world on a large scale, his mental 
freedom, yes, even his chance of having truly ele- 
vating, intellectual friendships. For it was plain 
enough that the men whose friendship would be of 
genuine and stimulating profit to him would not 
2 19 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


like her. Now that he thought of it, she seemed 
latterly to make no friends at all. 

Suddenly, as he watched in a blank sort of way 
Brother Soulsby take out a penknife, and lop an 
offending twig from a rose-bush against the fence, 
something occurred to him. There was a curious 
exception to that rule of Alice’s isolation. She 
had made at least one friend. Levi Gorringe 
seemed to like her extremely. 

As if his mind had been a camera, Theron 
snapped a shutter down upon this odd, unbidden 
idea, and turned away from the window. 

The sounds of an active, almost strenuous con- 
versation in female voices came from the kitchen. 
Theron opened the door noiselessly, and put in 
his head, conscious of something furtive in his 
intention. 

“You must dreen every drop of water off the 
spinach, mind, before you put it over, or else — ” 

It was Sister Soulsby’ s sharp and penetrating 
tones which came to him. Theron closed the 
door again, and surrendered himself once more 
to the circling whirl of his thoughts. 


CHAPTER XV 


A love- feast at nine in the morning opened 
the public services of a Sunday still memorable in 
the annals of Octavius Methodism. 

This ceremony, which four times a year pre- 
ceded the sessions of the Quarterly Conference, 
was not necessarily an event of importance. It 
was an occasion upon which the brethren and 
sisters who clung to the old-fashioned, primitive 
ways of the itinerant circuit-riders, let themselves 
go with emphasized independence, putting up 
more vehement prayers than usual, and adding a 
special fervor of noise to their “ Amens ! ” and 
other interjections, — and that was all. 

It was Theron’s first love-feast in Octavius, 
and as the big class-room in the church basement 
began to fill up, and he noted how the men with 
ultra radical views and the women clad in the 
most ostentatious drabs and grays were crowding 
into the front seats, he felt his spirits sinking. He 
had literally to force himself from sentence to sen- 
tence, when the time came for him to rise and 
open the proceedings with an exhortation. He 
had eagerly offered this function to the Presiding 
221 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Elder, the Rev. Aziel P. Larrabee, who sat in 
severe silence on the little platform behind him, 
but had been informed that that dignitary would 
lead off in giving testimony later on. So Theron, 
feeling all the while the hostile eyes of the Elder 
burning holes in his back, dragged himself some- 
how through the task. He had never known any 
such difficulty of speech before. The relief was 
almost overwhelming when he came to the cus- 
tomary part where all are adjured to be as brief as 
possible in witnessing for the Lord, because the 
time belongs to all the people, and the Discipline 
forbids the feast to last more than ninety minutes. 
He delivered this injunction to brevity with marked 
earnestness, and then sat down abruptly. 

There was some rather boisterous singing, dur- 
ing which the stewards, beginning with the plat- 
form, passed plates of bread cut in small cubes, 
and water in big plated pitchers and tumblers, 
about among the congregation, threading their 
way between the long wooden benches ordinarily 
occupied at this hour by the children of the Sun- 
day-school, and helping each brother and sister in 
turn. They held by the old custom, here in Octa- 
vius, and all along the seats the sexes alternated, 
as they do at a polite dinner- table. 

Theron impassively watched the familiar scene. 
The early nervousness had passed away. He felt 
now that he was not in the least afraid of these 
people, even with the Presiding Elder thrown in. 


222 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Folks who sang with such unintelligence, and who 
threw themselves with such undignified fervor into 
this childish business of the bread and water, 
could not be formidable antagonists for a man of 
intellect. He had never realized before what a 
spectacle the Methodist love-feast probably pre- 
sented to outsiders. What must they think of it ! 

He had noticed that the Soulsbys sat together, 
in the centre and toward the front. Next to 
Brother Soulsby sat Alice. He thought she looked 
pale and preoccupied, and set it down in passing 
to her innate distaste for the sombre garments she 
was wearing, and for the company she perforce 
found herself in. Another head was in the way, 
and for a time Theron did not observe who sat 
beside Alice on the other side. When at last he 
saw that it was Levi Gorringe, his instinct was to 
wonder what the lawyer must be saying to himself 
about these noisy and shallow enthusiasts. A re- 
curring emotion of loyalty to the simple people 
among whom, after all, he had lived his whole life, 
prompted him to feel that it was n’t wholly nice of 
Gorringe to come and enjoy this revelation of 
their foolish side, as if it were a circus. There 
was some vague memory in his mind which asso- 
ciated Gorringe with other love-feasts, and with a 
cynical attitude toward them. Oh, yes ! he had 
told how he went to one just for the sake of 
sitting beside the girl he admired — and was 
pursuing. 

223 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


The stewards had completed their round, and 
the loud, discordant singing came to an end. 
There ensued a little pause, during which Theron 
turned to the Presiding Elder with a gesture of 
invitation to take charge of the further proceed- 
ings. The Elder responded with another gesture, 
calling his attention to something going on in 
front. 

Brother and Sister Soulsby, to the considerable 
surprise of everybody, had risen to their feet, and 
were standing in their places, quite motionless, and 
with an air of professional self-assurance dimly dis- 
:ernible under a large show of humility. They 
stood thus until complete silence had been se- 
cured. Then the woman, lifting her head, began 
to sing. The words were “ Rock of Ages,” but no 
one present had heard the tune to which she 
wedded them. Her voice was full and very sweet, 
and had in it tender cadences which all her hearers 
found touching. She knew how to sing, and she 
put forth the words so that each was distinctly 
intelligible. There came a part where Brother 
Soulsby, lifting his head in turn, took up a tuneful 
second to her air. Although the two did not, as 
one could hear by listening closely, sing the same 
words at the same time, they produced none the 
less most moving and delightful harmonies of 
sound. 

The experience was so novel and charming that 
listeners ran ahead in their minds to fix the num- 

224 . 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ber of verses there were in the hymn, and to hope 
that none would be left out. Toward the end, 
when some of the intolerably self-conceited local 
singers, fancying they had caught the tune, started 
to join in, they were stopped by an indignant 
“ sh-h ! ” which rose from all parts of the class- 
room ; and the Soulsbys, with a patient and pensive 
kindliness written on their uplifted faces, gave 
that verse over again. 

What followed seemed obviously restrained and 
modified by the effect of this unlooked-for and 
tranquillizing overture. The Presiding Elder was 
known to enjoy visits to old-fashioned congrega- 
tions like that of Octavius, where he could indulge 
to the full his inner passion for high-pitched pas- 
sionate invocations and violent spiritual demeanor, 
but this time he spoke temperately, almost sooth- 
ingly. The most tempestuous of the local wit- 
nesses for the Lord gave in their testimony in 
relatively pacific tones, under the influence of the 
spell which good music had laid upon the gather- 
ing. There was the deepest interest as to what 
the two visitors would do in this way. Brother 
Soulsby spoke first, very briefly and in well- 
rounded and well-chosen, if conventional, phrases. 
His wife, following him, delivered in a melodious 
monotone some equally hackneyed remarks. The 
assemblage, listening in rapt attention, felt the 
suggestion of reserved power in every sentence she 
uttered, and burst forth, as she dropped into her 
15 225 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


seat, in a loud chorus of approving ejaculations. 
The Soulsbys had captured Octavius with their 
first outer skirmish line. 

Everything seemed to move forward now with a 
new zest and spontaneity. Theron had picked 
out for the occasion the best of those sermons 
which he had prepared in Tyre, at the time when 
he was justifying his ambition to be accounted a 
pulpit orator. It was orthodox enough, but had 
been planned as the framework for picturesque 
and emotional rhetoric rather than doctrinal edifi- 
cation. He had never dreamed of trying it on 
Octavius before, and only on the yesterday had 
quavered at his own daring in choosing it now. 
Nothing but the desire to show Sister Soulsby 
what was in him had held him to the selection. 

Something of this same desire no doubt swayed 
and steadied him now in the pulpit. The labored 
slowness of his beginning seemed to him to be due 
to nervous timidity, until suddenly, looking down 
into those big eyes of Sister Soulsby’s, which were 
bent gravely upon him from where she sat beside 
Alice in the minister’s pew, he remembered that it 
was instead the studied deliberation which art had 
taught him. He went on, feeling more and more 
that the skill and histrionic power of his best days 
were returning to him, were as marked as ever, — 
nay, had neve^: triumphed before as they were 
triumphing now. The congregation watched and 
listened, with open, steadfast eyes and parted lips. 

2 26 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


For the first time in all that weary quarter, theii 
faces shone. The sustaining sparkle of their gaze 
lifted him to a peroration unrivalled in his own 
recollection of himself. 

He sat down, and bent his head forward upon 
the open Bible, breathing hard, but suffused with 
a glow of satisfaction. His ears caught the music 
of that sighing rustle through the audience which 
bespeaks a profound impression. He could 
scarcely keep the fingers of his hands, covering 
his bowed face in a devotional posture as they 
were, from drumming a jubilant tattoo. His pulses 
did this in every vein, throbbing with excited 
exultation. The insistent whim seized him, as he 
still bent thus before his people, to whisper to his 
own heart, “ At last ! The dogs ! ” 

The announcement that in the evening a series 
of revival meetings was to be inaugurated, had 
been made at the love-feast, and it was repeated 
now from the pulpit, with the added statement 
that for the once the class-meetings usually fol- 
lowing this morning service would be suspended. 
Then Theron came down the steps, conscious after 
a fashion that the Presiding Elder had laid a pro- 
pitiatory hand on his shoulder and spoken amiably 
about the sermon, and that several groups of more 
or less important parishioners were waiting in the 
aisle and the vestibule to shake hands and tell him 
how much they had enjoyed the sermon. His 
mind perversely kept hold of the thought that all 
227 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


this came too late. He politely smiled his way 
along out, and, overtaking the Soulsbys and his 
wife near the parsonage gate, went in with them. 

At the cold, picked-up noonday meal which was 
the Sunday rule of the house, Theron rather 
expected that his guests would talk about the 
sermon, or at any rate about the events of the 
ncrning. A Sabbath chill seemed to have settled 
upon both their tongues. They ate almost in 
silence, and their sparse remarks touched upon 
topics far removed from church affairs. Alice, 
too, seemed strangely disinclined to conversation. 
The husband knew her face and its varying moods 
so well that he could see she was laboring under 
some very powerful and deep emotion. No doubt 
it was the sermon, the oratorical swing of which 
still tingled in his own blood, that had so affected 
her. If she had said so, it would have pleased 
him, but she said nothing. 

After dinner, Brother Soulsby disappeared in 
his bedroom, with the remark that he guessed he 
would lie down awhile. Sister Soulsby put on her 
bonnet, and, explaining that she always prepared 
herself for an evening’s work by a long soiitarj 
walk, quitted the house. Alice, after she had put 
the dinner things away, went upstairs, and stayed 
there. Left to himself, Theron spent the after- 
noon in the easy-chair, and, in the intervals of 
confused introspection, read “ Recollections of 
my Youth ” through again from cover to cover. 

22S 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


He went through the remarkable experiences 
attending the opening of the revival, when evening 
came, as one in a dream. Long before the hour 
for the service arrived, the sexton came in to tell 
him that the church was already nearly full, and that 
it was going to be impossible to preserve any dis- 
tinction in the matter of pews. When the party 
from the parsonage went over — after another cold 
and mostly silent meal — it was to find the 
interior of the church densely packed, and people 
being turned away from the doors. 

Theron was supposed to preside over what fol- 
lowed, and he did sit on the central chair in the 
pulpit, between the Presiding Elder and Brother 
Soulsby, and on the several needful occasions did 
rise and perfunctorily make the formal remarks re- 
quired of him. The Elder preached a short, but 
vigorously phrased sermon. The Soulsbys sang 
three or four times — on each occasion with fami- 
liar hymnal words set to novel, concerted music — 
and then separately exhorted the assemblage. 
The husband’s part seemed well done. If his 
speech lacked some of the fire of the divine gird- 
ings which older Methodists recalled, it still led 
straight, and with kindling fervency, up to a season 
of power. The wife took up the word as he sat 
down. She had risen from one of the side-seats ; 
and, speaking as she walked, she moved forward 
till she stood within the altar-rail, immediately 
under the pulpit, and from this place, facing the 
2 2fi 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


listening throng, she delivered her harangue. 
Those who watched her words most intently got 
the least sense of meaning from them. The 
phrases were all familiar enough, — “ Jesus a very 
present help,” “ Sprinkled by the Blood,” “ Com- 
forted by the Word,” “ Sanctified by the Spirit,” 
" Born into the Kingdom,” and a hundred others, 
— but it was as in the case of her singing : the 
words were old ; the music was new. 

What Sister Soulsby said did not matter. The 
way she said it — the splendid, searching sweep 
of her great eyes ; the vibrating roll of her voice, 
now full of tears, now scornful, now boldly, jubi- 
lantly triumphant ; the sympathetic swaying of her 
willowy figure under the stress of her eloquence — 
was all wonderful. When she had finished, and 
stood, flushed and panting, beneath the shadow 
of the pulpit, she held up a hand deprecatingly 
as the resounding “ Amens ! ” and “ Bless the 
Lords ! ” began to well up about her. 

“ You have heard us sing,” she said, smiling to 
apologize for her shortness of breath. “ Now we 
want to hear you sing ! ” 

Her husband had risen as she spoke, and on the 
instant, with a far greater volume of voice than 
they had hitherto disclosed, the two began “ From 
Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” in the old, familiar 
tune. It did not need Sister Soulsby’s urgent and 
dramatic gesture to lift people to their feet. The 
whole assemblage sprang up, and, under the guid- 
230 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ance of these two powerful leading voices, thun- 
dered the hymn out as Octavius had never heard 
it before. 

While its echoes were still alive, the woman 
began speaking again. “ Don’t sit down ! ” she 
cried. “ You would stand up if the President of 
the United States was going by, even if he was 
only going fishing. How much more should you 
stand up in honor of living souls passing forward 
to find their Saviour ! ” 

The psychological moment was upon them. 
Groans and cries arose, and a palpable ferment 
stirred the throng. The exhortation to sinners 
to declare themselves, to come to the altar, 
was not only on the revivalist’s lips : it seemed 
to quiver in the very air, to be borne on every 
inarticulate exclamation in the clamor of the 
brethren. A young woman, with a dazed and 
startled look in her eyes, rose in the body of the 
church tremblingly hesitated for a moment, and 
then, with bowed head and blushing cheeks, 
pressed her way out from the end of a crowded 
pew and down the aisle to the rail. A triumphant 
outburst of welcoming ejaculations swelled to 
the roof as she knelt there, and under its impetus 
others followed her example. With interspersed 
snatches of song and shouted encouragements the 
excitement reached its height only when twoscore 
people, mostly young, were tightly clustered upon 
their knees about the rail, and in the space open- 
231 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ing upon the aisle. Above the confusion of peni- 
tential sobs and moans, and the hysterical murmur- 
ings of members whose conviction of entire sanctity 
kept them in their seats, could be heard the voices 
of the Presiding Elder, the Soulsbys, and the 
elderly deacons of the church, who moved about 
among the kneeling mourners, bending over them 
and patting their shoulders, and calling out to 
them : “ Fasten your thoughts on Jesus ! ” “ Oh, 

the Precious Blood ! ” “ Blessed be His Name ! ” 

“ Seek Him, and you shall find Him ! ” “ Cling 

to Jesus, and Him Crucified !” 

The Rev. Theron Ware did not, with the others, 
descend from the pulpit. Seated where he could 
not see Sister Soulsby, he had failed utterly to be 
moved by the wave of enthusiasm she had evoked. 
What he heard her say disappointed him. He 
had expected from her more originality, more 
spice of her own idiomatic, individual sort. He 
viewed with a cold sense of aloofness the evidences 
of her success when they began to come forward 
and abase themselves at the altar. The instant 
resolve that, come what might, he would not go 
down there among them, sprang up ready-made in 
his mind. He saw his two companions pass him 
and descend the pulpit stairs, and their action 
only hardened his resolution. If an excuse were 
needed, he was presiding, and the place to preside 
in was the pulpit. But he waived in his mind the 
whole question of an excuse. 

232 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


After a little, he put his hand over his face, lean- 
ing the elbow forward on the reading-desk. The 
scene below would have thrilled him to the marrow 
six months, — yes, three months ago. He put a 
finger across his eyes now, to half shut it out. The 
spectacle of these silly young “ mourners ” — 
kneeling they knew not why, trembling at they 
could not tell what, pledging themselves frantically 
to dogmas and mysteries they knew nothing of, 
under the influence of a hubbub of outcries as 
meaningless in their way, and inspiring in much 
the same way, as the racket of a fife and drum 
corps, — the spectacle saddened and humiliated 
him now. He was conscious of a dawning sense 
of shame at being even tacitly responsible for such 
a thing. His fancy conjured up the idea of Dr. 
Ledsmar coming in and beholding this maudlin 
and unseemly scene, and he felt his face grow hot 
at the bare thought. 

Looking through his fingers, Theron all at once 
saw something which caught at his breath with a 
sharp clutch. Alice had risen from the minister’s 
pew — the most conspicuous one in the church — 
and was moving down the aisle toward the rail, 
her uplifted face chalk-like in its whiteness, and her 
eyes wide-open, looking straight ahead. 

The young pastor could scarcely credit his sight. 
He thrust aside his hand, and bent forward, only 
to see his wife sink upon her knees among the 
rest, and to hear this notable accession to the 
233 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


" mourners ” hailed by a tumult of approving 
shouts. Then, remembering himself, he drew 
back and put up his hand, shutting out the strange 
scene altogether. To see nothing at all was a 
relief, and under cover he closed his eyes, and bit 
his teeth together. 

A fresh outburst cf thanksgivings, spreading 
noisily through the congregation, prompted him to 
peer through his fingers again. Levi Gorringe was 
making his way down the aisle, — was at the 
moment quite in front. Theron found himself 
watching this man with the stern composure of a 
fatalist. The clamant brethren down below were 
stirred to new excitement by the thought that the 
sceptical lawyer, so long with them, yet not of 
them, had been humbled and won by the out- 
pourings of the Spirit. Theron’s perceptions were 
keener. He knew that Gorringe was coming for- 
ward to kneel beside Alice. The knowledge left 
him curiously undisturbed. He saw the lawyer 
advance, gently insinuate himself past the form of 
some kneeling mourner who was in his way, and 
drop on his knees close beside the bowed figure 
of Alice. The two touched shoulders as they 
bent forward beneath Sister Soulsby’s outstretched 
hands, held over them as in a blessing. Theron 
looked fixedly at them, and professed to himself 
that he was barely interested. 

A little afterward, he was standing up in his 
place, and reading aloud a list of names which one 
234. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


of the stewards had given him. They were the 
names of those who had asked that evening to be 
taken into the church as members on probation. 
The sounds of the recent excitement were all 
hushed now, save as two or three enthusiasts in a 
corner raised their voices in abrupt greeting of 
each name in its turn, but Theron felt somehow 
that this noise had been transferred to the inside 
of his head. A continuous buzzing went on there, 
so that the sound of his voice was far-off and un- 
familiar in his ears. 

He read through the list — comprising some 
fifteen items — and pronounced the names with 
great distinctness. It was necessary to take pains 
with this, because the only name his blurred eyes 
seemed to see anywhere on the foolscap sheet was 
that of Levi Gorringe. When he had finished and 
was taking his seat, some one began speaking to 
him from the body of the church. He saw that 
this was the steward, who was explaining to him 
that the most important name of the lot — that of 
Brother Gorringe — had not been read out. 

Theron smiled and shook his head. Then, 
when the Presiding Elder touched him on the arm, 
and assured him that he had not mentioned the 
name in question, he replied quite simply, and 
with another smile, “ I thought it was the only 
name I did read out.” 

Then he sat down abruptly, and let his head fall 
to one side. There were hurried movements 

*35 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


inside the pulpit, and people in the audience 
had begun to stand up wonderingly, when the 
Presiding Elder, with uplifted hands, confronted 
them. 

“ We will omit the Doxology, and depart quietly 
after the benediction,” he said. “ Brother Ware 
seems to have been overcome by the heat.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


When Theron woke next morning, Alice seemed 
to have dressed and left the room, — a thing which 
had never happened before. 

This fact connected itself at once in his brain 
with the recollection of her having made an exhi- 
bition of herself the previous evening, — going for- 
ward before all eyes to join the unconverted and 
penitent sinners, as if she were some tramp or 
shady female, instead of an educated lady, a pro- 
fessing member from her girlhood, and a minis- 
ter’s wife. It crossed his mind that probably she 
had risen and got away noiselessly, for very shame 
at looking him in the face, after such absurd 
behavior. 

Then he remembered more, and grasped the 
situation. He had fainted in church, and had 
been brought home and helped to bed. Dim 
memories of unaccustomed faces in the bedroom, 
of nauseous drugs and hushed voices, came to him 
out of the night-time. Now that he thought of it, 
he was a sick man. Having settled this, he went 
off to sleep again, a feverish and broken sleep, and 
remained in this state most of the time for the fol* 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


lowing twenty-four hours. In the brief though 
numerous intervals of waking, he found certain 
things clear in his mind. One was that he was 
annoyed with Alice, but would dissemble his feel- 
ings. Another was that it was much pleasanter to 
be ill than to be forced to attend and take part in 
those revival meetings. These two ideas came 
and went in a lazy, drowsy fashion, mixing them- 
selves up with other vagrant fancies, yet always 
remaining on top. 

In the evening the singing from the church next 
door filled his room. The Soulsbys’ part of it was 
worth keeping awake for. He turned over and 
deliberately dozed when the congregation sang. 

Alice came up a number of times during the 
day to ask how he felt, and to bring him broth 
or toast- water. On several occasions, when he 
heard her step, the perverse inclination mastered 
him to shut his eyes, and pretend to be asleep, so 
that she might tip-toe out again. She had a 
depressed and thoughtful air, and spoke to him 
jike one whose mind was on something else. 
Neither of them alluded to what had happened the 
previous evening. Toward the close of the long 
day, she came to ask him whether he would prefer 
her to remain in the house, instead of attending 
the meeting. 

“ Go, by all means,” he said almost curtly. 

The Presiding Elder and the Sunday-school 
superintendent called early Tuesday morning at 
238 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the parsonage to make brotherly inquiries, and 
Theron was feeling so much better that he himself 
suggested their coming upstairs to see him. The 
Elder was in good spirits ; he smiled approvingly, 
and even put in a jocose word or two while the 
superintendent sketched for the invalid in a cheer- 
ful way the leading incidents of the previous 
evening. 

There had been an enormous crowd, even 
greater than that of Sunday night, and everybody 
had been looking forward to another notable and 
exciting season of grace. These expectations were 
especially heightened when Sister Soulsby ascended 
the pulpit stairs and took charge of the proceed- 
ings. She deferred to Paul’s views about women 
preachers on Sundays, she said ; but on week-days 
she had just as much right to snatch brands from 
the burning as Paul, or Peter, or any other man. 
She went on like that, in a breezy, off-hand fashion 
which tickled the audience immensely, and led to 
the liveliest anticipations of what would happen 
when she began upon the evening’s harvest of 
souls. 

But it was something else that happened. At a 
signal from Sister Soulsby the stewards got up, 
and, in an unconcerned sort of way, went through 
the throng to the rear of the church, locked the 
doors, and put the keys in their pockets. The 
sister dryly explained now to the surprised con- 
gregation that there was a season for all things, 
239 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and that on the present occasion they would sus- 
pend the glorious work of redeeming fallen human 
nature, and take up instead the equally noble 
task of raising some fifteen hundred dollars which 
the church needed in its business. The doors 
would only be opened again when this had been 
accomplished. 

The brethren were much taken aback by this 
trick, and they permitted themselves to exchange 
a good many scowling and indignant glances, the 
while their professional visitors sang another of 
their delightfully novel sacred duets. Its charm 
of harmony for once fell upon unsympathetic ears. 
But then Sister Soulsby began another monologue, 
defending this way of collecting money, chaffing 
the assemblage with bright-eyed impudence on 
their having been trapped, and scoring, one after 
another, neat and jocose little personal points on 
local characteristics, at which everybody but the 
individual touched grinned broadly. She was so 
droll and cheeky, and withal effective in her talk, 
that she quite won the crowd over. She told a 
story about a woodchuck which fairly brought 
down the house. 

“A man,” she began, with a quizzical twinkle in 
her eye, • told me once about hunting a wood- 
chuck with a pack of dogs, and they chased it so 
hard that it finally escaped only by climbing a 
butternut-tree. ‘But, my friend,’ I said to him, 
‘woodchucks can’t climb trees, — butternut- trees 
240 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


or any other kind, — and you know it ! ’ All he 
said in reply to me was : ‘ This woodchuck had 
to climb a tree ! * And that ’s the way with this 
congregation. You think you can’t raise $1,500, 
but you ’ve got to.” 

So it went on. She set them all laughing ; and 
then, with a twist of the eyes and a change of 
voice, lo, and behold, she had them nearly crying 
in the same breath. Under the pressure of these 
jumbled emotions, brethren began to rise up in 
their pews and say what they would give. The 
wonderful woman had something smart and apt 
to say about each fresh contribution, and used it 
to screw up the general interest a notch further 
toward benevolent hysteria. With songs and jokes 
and impromptu exhortations and prayers she kept 
the thing whirling, until a sort of duel of generosity 
began between two of the most unlikely men, — 
Erastus Winch and Levi Gorringe. Everybody 
had been surprised when Winch gave his first $50; 
but when he rose again, half an hour afterward, 
and said that, owing to the high public position of 
some of the new members on probation, he foresaw 
a great future for the church, and so felt moved 
to give another $25, there was general amazement. 
Moved by a common instinct, all eyes were turned 
upon Levi Gorringe, and he, without the slightest 
hesitation, stood up and said he would give $100. 
There was something in his tone which must have 
annoyed Brother Winch, for he shot up like a dart, 
16 241 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and called out, “ Put me down for fifty more ; ” 
and that brought Gorringe to his feet with an 
added $50, and then the two went on raising each 
other till the assemblage was agape with admiring 
stupefaction. 

This gladiatorial combat might have been going 
on till now, the Sunday-school superintendent con- 
cluded, if Winch hadn’t subsided. The amount 
of the contributions had n’t been figured up yet, 
for Sister Soulsby kept the list; but there had 
been a tremendous lot of money raised. Of that 
there could be no doubt. 

The Presiding Elder now told Theron that the 
Quarterly Conference had been adjourned yester- 
day till to-day. He and Brother Davis were even 
now on their way to attend the session in the 
church next door. The Elder added, with an 
obvious kindly significance, that though Theron 
was too ill to attend it, he guessed his absence 
would do him no harm. Then the two men left 
the room, and Theron went to sleep again. 

Another almost blank period ensued, this time 
lasting for forty-eight hours. The young minister 
was enfolded in the coils of a fever of some sort, 
which Brother Soulsby, who had dabbled consider- 
ably in medicine, admitted that he was puzzled 
about. Sometimes he thought that it was typhoid, 
and then again there were symptoms which looked 
suspiciously like brain fever. The Methodists of 
Octavius counted no physician among their num- 
242 _ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


bers, and when, on the second day, Alice grew 
scared, and decided, with Brother Soulsby’s assent, 
to call in professional advice, the only doctor’s 
name she could recall was that of Ledsmar. She 
was conscious of an instinctive dislike for the vague 
image of him her fancy had conjured up, but the 
reflection that he was Theron’s friend, and so 
probably would be more moderate in his charges, 
decided her. 

Brother Soulsby showed a most comforting tact 
and swiftness of apprehension when Alice, in men- 
tioning Dr. Ledsmar’s name, disclosed by her man- 
ner a fear that his being sent for would create 
talk among the church people. He volunteered 
at once to act as messenger himself, and, with no 
better guide than her dim hints at direction, 
found the doctor and brought him back to the 
parsonage. 

Dr. Ledsmar expressly disclaimed to Soulsby all 
pretence of professional skill, and made him under- 
stand that he went along solely because he liked 
Mr. Ware, and was interested in him, and in any 
case would probably be of as much use as the 
wisest of strange physicians, — a view which the 
little revivalist received with comprehending nods 
of tacit acquiescence. Ledsmar came, and was 
taken up to the sick-room. He sat on the bed- 
side and talked with Theron awhile, and then 
went downstairs again. To Alice’s anxious inqui- 
ries, he replied that it seemed to him merely a 
243 


THE DAMNATION OP THERON WARE 

case of over-work and over-worry, about which 
there was not the slightest occasion for alarm. 

“ But he says the strangest things,” the wife put 
in. “ He has been quite delirious at times.” 

“ That means only that his brain is taking a rest 
as well as his body,” remarked Ledsmar. “ That 
is Nature’s way of securing an equilibrium of re- 
pose — of recuperation. He will come out of it 
with his mind all the fresher and clearer.” 

“ I don’t believe he knows shucks ! ” was Alice’s 
comment when she closed the street door upon 
Dr. Ledsmar. “ Anybody could have come in and 
looked at a sick man and said , i Leave him alone.* 
You expect something more from a doctor. It ’s 
his business to say what to do. And I suppose 
he ’ll charge two dollars for just telling me that 
my husband was resting ! ” 

“ No,” said Brother Soulsby, “ he said he never 
practised, and that he would come only as a 
friend.” 

“ Well, it is n’t my idea of a friend, — not to 
prescribe a single thing,” protested Alice. 

Yet it seemed that no prescription was needed, 
after all. The next morning Theron woke to find 
himself feeling quite restored in spirits and nerves. 
He sat up in bed, and after an instant of weakly 
giddiness, recognized that he was all right again. 
Greatly pleased, he got up, and proceeded to 
dress himself. There were little recurring hints 
of faintness and vertigo, while he was shaving, but 
244 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


he had the sense to refer these to the fact that he 
was very, very hungry. He went downstairs, and 
smiled with the pleased pride of a child at the 
surprise which his appearance at the door created. 
Alice and the Soulsbys were at breakfast. He 
joined them, and ate voraciously, declaring that it 
was worth a month’s illness to have things taste so 
good once more. 

“You still look white as a sheet,” said Alice, 
warningly. “ If I were you, I ’d be careful in my 
diet for a spell yet.” 

For answer, Theron let Sister Soulsby help him 
again to ham and eggs. He talked exclusively to 
Sister Soulsby, or rather invited her by his manner 
to talk to him, and listened and watched her with 
indolent content. There was a sort of happy and 
purified languor in his physical and mental being, 
which needed and appreciated just this, — to sit 
next a bright and attractive woman at a good 
breakfast, and be ministered to by her sprightly 
conversation, by the flash of her informing and 
inspiring eyes, and the nameless sense of sup- 
port and repose which her near proximity exhaled. 
He felt himself figuratively leaning against Sister 
Soulsby’s buoyant personality, and resting. 

Brother Soulsby, like the intelligent creature he 
was, ate his breakfast in peace ; but Alice would 
interpose remarks from time to time. Theron was 
conscious of a certain annoyance at this, and knew 
that he was showing it by an exaggerated display 
245 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


of interest in everything Sister Soulsby said, and 
persisted in it. There trembled in the background 
of his thoughts ever and again the recollection of 
a grievance against his wife, — an offence which she 
had committed, — but he put it aside as something 
to be grappled and dealt with when he felt again 
like taking up the serious and disagreeable things 
of life. For the moment, he desired only to be 
amused by Sister Soulsby. Her casual mention 
of the fact that she and her husband were taking 
their departure that very day, appealed to him as 
an added reason for devoting his entire attention 
to her. 

“ You must n’t forget that famous talking-to you 
threatened me with, — that ‘ regular hoeing-over,’ 
you know,” he reminded her, when he found him- 
self alone with her after breakfast. He smiled as 
he spoke, in frank enjoyment of the prospect. 

Sister Soulsby nodded, and aided with a roll of 
her eyes the effect of mock-menace in her uplifted 
forefinger. “ Oh, never fear,” she cried. " You ’ll 
catch it hot and strong. But that ’ll keep till after- 
noon. Tell me, do you feel strong enough to go 
in next door and attend the trustees’ meeting this 
forenoon ? It ’s rather important that you should 
be there, if you can spur yourself up to it. By the 
way, you have n’t asked what happened at the 
Quarterly Conference yesterday.” 

Theron sighed, and made a little grimace of 
repugnance. “ If you knew how little I cared 1 ” 
246 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


he said. “ I did hope you ’d forget all about men- 
tioning that, — and everything else connected with 
— the next door. You talk so much more inter- 
estingly about other things.” 

“ Here ’s gratitude for you ! ” exclaimed Sister 
Soulsby, with a gay simulation of despair. “ Why, 
man alive, do you know what I ’ve done for you ? 
I got around on the Presiding Elder’s blind side, 
I captured old Pierce, I wound Winch right around 
my little finger, I worked two or three of the class- 
leaders — all on your account. The result was you 
went through as if you ’d had your ears pinned 
back, and been greased all over. You ’ve got an 
extra hundred dollars added to your salary ; do 
you hear? On the sixth question of the order of 
business the Elder ruled that the recommendation 
of the last conference’s estimating committee could 
be revised (between ourselves he was wrong, but 
that does n’t matter) , and so you ’re in clover. 
And very friendly things were said about you, 
too.” 

“ It was very kind of you,” said Theron. “ I am 
really extremely grateful to you.” He shook her 
by the hand to make up for what he realized to be 
a lack of fervor in his tones. 

“ Well, then,” Sister Soulsby replied, “you pull 
yourself together, and take your place as chairman 
of the trustees’ meeting, and see to it that, what- 
ever comes up, you side with old Pierce and 
Winch.” 


247 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

“ Oh, they ’ re my friends now, are they? ” asked 
Theron, with a faint play of irony about his lips. 

“Yes, that’s your ticket this election,” she 
answered briskly, “ and mind you vote it straight. 
Don’t bother about reasons now. Just take it 
from me, as the song says, ‘that things have 
changed since Willie died.’ That ’s all. And 
then come back here, and this afternoon we ’ll 
have a good old-fashioned jaw.” 

The Rev. Mr. Ware, walking with ostentatious 
feebleness, and forcing a conventional smile upon 
his wan face, duly made his unexpected appear- 
ance at the trustees’ meeting in one of the smaller 
class-rooms. He received their congratulations 
gravely, and shook hands with all three. It re- 
quired an effort to do this impartially, because, 
upon sight of Levi Gorringe, there rose up sud- 
denly within him an emotion of fierce dislike and 
enmity. In some enigmatic way his thoughts had 
kept themselves away from Gorringe ever since 
Sunday evening. Now they concentrated with 
furious energy and swiftness upon him. Theron 
seemed able in a flash of time to co-ordinate many 
recollections of Gorringe, — the early liking Alice 
had professed for him, the mystery of those pur- 
chased plants in her garden, the story of the girl 
he had lost in church, his offer to lend him money, 
the way in which he had sat beside Alice at the 
love- feast and followed her to the altar-rail in 
the evening. These raced abreast through the 
248 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


young minister’s brain, yet with each its own 
image, and its relation to the others clearly 
defined. 

He found the nerve, all the same, to take this 
third trustee by the hand, and to thank him for 
his congratulations, and even to say, with a sur- 
face smile of welcome, “It is Brother Gorringe, 
now, I remember.” 

The work before the meeting was chiefly of a 
routine kind. In most places this would have 
been transacted by the stewards ; but in Octavius 
these minor officials had degenerated into mere 
ceremonial abstractions, who humbly ratified, or by 
arrangement anticipated, the will of the powerful, 
mortgage- owning trustees. Theron sat languidly 
at the head of the table while these common- 
place matters passed in their course, noting the 
intonations of Gorringe’s voice as he read frorr 
his secretary’s book, and finding his ear displeased 
by them. No issue arose upon any of these trivial 
affairs, and the minister, feeling faint and weary in 
the heat, wondered why Sister Soulsby had insisted 
on his coming. 

All at once he sat up straight, with an instinc- 
tive warning in his mind that here was the thing, 
Gorringe had taken up the subject of the “debt- 
raising” evening, and read out its essentials as 
they had been embodied in a report of the stew- 
ards. The gross sum obtained, in cash and prom- 
ises, was #1,560. The stewards had collected of 

249 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


this a trifle less than half, but hoped to get it all 
in during the ensuing quarter. There were, also, 
the bill of Mr. and Mrs. Soulsby for $150, and the 
increases of $100 in the pastor’s salary and $25 
in the apportioned contribution of the charge 
toward the Presiding Elder’s maintenance, the 
two latter items of which the Quarterly Confer- 
ence had sanctioned. 

“I want to hear the names of the subscribers 
and their amounts read out,” put in Brother 
Pierce. 

When this was done, it became apparent that 
much more than half of the entire amount had 
been offered by two men. Levi Gorringe’s $450 
and Erastus Winch’s $425 left only $690 to be 
divided up among some seventy or eighty other 
members of the congregation. 

Brother Pierce speedily stopped the reading of 
these subordinate names. “ They ’re of no concern 
whatever,” he said, despite the fact that his own 
might have been reached in time. “ Those first 
names are what I was getting at. Have those two 
first amounts, the big ones, be’n paid?” 

“ One has — the other not,” replied Gorringe. 

11 Pre- cisely,” remarked the senior trustee. 
“ And I ’m goin’ to move that it need n’t be paid, 
either. When Brother Winch, here, began hollerin' 
out those extra twenty-fives and fifties, that even- 
ing, it was under a complete misapprehension. 
He ’d be’n on the cheese board that same Mon- 
^250 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


day afternoon, and he ’d done what he thought 
was a mighty big stroke of business, and he felt 
liberal according. I know just what that feelin’ is 
myself. If I ’d be’n makin’ a mint o’ money, 
instead o’ losin’ all the while, as I do, I ’d ’a’ done 
just the same. But the next day, lo, and behold, 
Brother Winch found that it was all a mistake, — 
he had n’t made a single penny.” 

“ Fact is, I lost by the whole transaction,” put 
in Erastus Winch, defiantly. 

“Just so,” Brother Pierce went on. “He lost 
money. You have his own word for it. Well, 
then, I say it would be a burning shame for us to 
consent to touch one penny of what he offered to 
give, in the fulness of his heart, while he was 
laborin’ under that delusion. And I move he be 
not asked for it. We 've got quite as much as we 
need, without it. I put my motion.” 

“That is, you don’t put it,” suggested Winch, 
correctingly. “ You move it, and Brother Ware, 
whom we ’re all so glad to see able to come and 
preside, — he ’ll put it.” 

There was a moment’s silence. “ You ’ve heard 
the motion,” said Theron, tentatively, and then 
paused for possible remarks. He was not going 
to meddle in this thing himself, and Gorringe was 
the only other who might have an opinion to offer. 
The necessities of the situation forced him to 
glance at the lawyer inquiringly. He did so, and 
turned his eyes away again like a shot. Gorringe 
. 2 S] L_ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


was looking him squarely in the face, and the look 
was freighted with satirical contempt. 

The young minister spoke between clinched 
teeth. “ All those in favor will say Aye.’* 

Brothers Pierce and Winch put up a simulta- 
neous and confident “ Aye.” 

“ No, you don’t ! ” interposed the lawyer, with 
deliberate, sneering emphasis. “ I decidedly pro- 
test against Winch’s voting. He ’s directly inter- 
ested, and he must n’t vote. Your chairman knows 
that perfectly well.” 

“ Yes, I think Brother Winch ought not to vote,” 
decided Theron, with great calmness. He saw 
now what was coming, and underneath his surface 
composure there were sharp flutterings. 

“ Very well, then,” said Gorringe. “ I vote No, 
and it ’s a tie. It rests with the chairman now to 
cast the deciding vote, and say whether this inter- 
esting arrangement shall go through or not.” 

“ Me ? ” said Theron, eying the lawyer with a 
cool self-control which had come all at once to 
him. « Me ? Oh, I vote Aye.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


“ Well, I did what you told me to do,” Theron 
Ware remarked to Sister Soulsby, when at last they 
found themselves alone in the sitting-room after 
the midday meal. 

It had taken not a little strategic skirmishing to 
secure the room to themselves, for the hospitable 
Alice, much touched by the thought of her new 
friend’s departure that very evening, had gladly 
proposed to let all the work stand over until night, 
and devote herself entirely to Sister Soulsby. 
When, finally, Brother Soulsby conceived and deftly 
executed the coup of interesting her in the budding 
of roses, and then leading her off into the garden 
to see with her own eyes how it was done, Theron 
had a sense of being left alone with a co-conspira- 
tor. The notion impelled him to plunge at once 
into the heart of their mystery. 

“ I did what you told me to do,” he repeated, 
looking up from his low easy-chair to where she 
sat by the desk ; “ and I dare say you won’t be 
surprised when I add that I have no respect for 
myself for doing it.” 

“ And yet you would go and do it right over 
again, eh? ” the woman said, in bright, pert tones, 
253 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

nodding her head, and smiling at him with roguish, 
comprehending eyes. “ Yes, that ’s the way we ’re 
built. We spend our lives doing that sort of 
thing.” 

“ I don’t know that you would precisely grasp 
my meaning,” said the young minister, with a 
polite effort in his words to mask the untoward 
side of the suggestion. “ It is a matter of con- 
science with me ; and I am pained and shocked 
at myself.” 

Sister Soulsby drummed for an absent moment 
with her thin, nervous fingers on the desk-top. 
“ I guess maybe you ’d better go and lie down 
again,” she said gently. “ You ’re a sick man, 
still, and it ’s no good your worrying your head just 
now with things of this sort. You ’ll see them dif- 
ferently when you ’re quite yourself again.” 

“ No, no,” pleaded Theron. “ Do let us have 
our talk out ! I ’m all right. My mind is clear as 
a bell. Truly, I ’ve really counted on this talk 
with you.” 

“ But there ’s something else to talk about, is n’t 
there, besides — besides your conscience ? ” she 
asked. Her eyes bent upon him a kindly pressure 
as she spoke, which took all possible harshness from 
her meaning. 

Theron answered the glance rather than her 
words. “ I know that you are my friend,” he said 
simply. 

Sister Soulsby straightened herself, and looked 

254 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


down upon him with a new intentness. “Well, 
then,” she began, “ let ’s thrash this thing out right 
now, and be done with it. You say it ’s hurt your 
conscience to do just one little hundredth part of 
what there was to be done here. Ask yourself 
what you mean by that. Mind, I ’m not quarrel- 
ling, and I ’m not thinking about anything except 
just your own state of mind. You think you soiled 
your hands by doing what you did. That is to 
say, you wanted all the dirty work done by other 
people. That ’s it, is n’t it? ” 

The Rev. Mr. Ware sat up, in turn, and looked 
doubtingly into his companion’s face. 

“ Oh, we were going to be frank, you know,” she 
added, with a pleasant play of mingled mirth and 
honest liking in her eyes. 

*• No,” he said, picking his words, “ my point 
would rather be that — that there ought not to 
have been any of what you yourself call this — this 
* dirty work.’ That is my feeling.” 

“Now we ’re getting at it,” said Sister Soulsby, 
briskly. “ My dear friend, you might just as well 
say that potatoes are unclean and unfit to eat 
because manure is put into the ground they grow 
in. Just look at the case. Your church here was 
running behind every year. Your people had got 
into a habit of putting in nickels instead of dimes, 
and letting you sweat for the difference. That ’s a 
habit, like tobacco, or biting your finger-nails, or 
anything else. Either you were all to come to 
255 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


smash here, or the people had to be shaken up, 
stood on their heads, broken of their habit. It ’s 
my business — mine and Soulsby’s — to do that 
sort of thing. We came here and we did it, — 
did it up brown, too. We not only raised all th« 
money the church needs, and to spare, but I took 
a personal shine to you, and went out of my way 
to fix up things for you. It is n’t only the extra 
hundred dollars, but the whole tone of the congre- 
gation is changed toward you now. You ’ll see 
that they ’ll be asking to have you back here, next 
spring. And you ’re solid with your Presiding 
Elder, too. Well, now, tell me straight, — is that 
worth while, or not? ” 

“ I ’ve told you that I am very grateful,” 
answered the minister, “and I say it again, and 
I shall never be tired of repeating it. But — but 
it was the means I had in mind.” 

“ Quite so,” rejoined the sister, patiently. “ If 
you saw the way a hotel dinner was cooked, you 
would n’t be able to stomach it. Did you ever see 
a play? In a theatre, I mean. I supposed not. 
But you ’ll understand when I say that the per- 
formance looks one way from where the audience 
sit. and quite a different way when you are behind 
the scenes, 'xhere you see that the trees and 
houses are cloth, and the moon is tissue paper, 
and the flying fairy is a middle-aged woman strung 
up on a rope. That does n’t prove that the play, 
out in front, is n’t beautiful and affecting, and all 

2Ja6 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


that. It only shows that everything in this world 
is produced by machinery — by organization. 
The trouble is that you ’ve been let in on the 
stage, behind the scenes, so to speak, and you ’re 
so green — if you ’ll pardon me — that you want to 
sit down and cry because the trees are cloth, and 
the moon is a lantern. And I say, Don’t be such 
a goose ! ” 

“ I see what you mean,” Theron said, with an 
answering smile. He added, more gravely, “ All 
the same, the Winch business seems to me — ” 

“ Now the Winch business is my own affair,” 
Sister Soulsby broke in abruptly. “ I take all the 
responsibility for that. You need know nothing 
about it. You simply voted as you did on the merits 
of the case as he presented them, — that ’s all.” 

“ But — ” Theron began, and then paused. 
Something had occurred to him, and he knitted 
his brows to follow its course of expansion in his 
mind. Suddenly he raised his head. “ Then you 
arranged with Winch to make those bogus offers 
— just to lead others on ? ” he demanded. 

Sister Soulsby’s large eyes beamed down upon 
him in reply, at first in open merriment, then more 
soberly, till their regard was almost pensive. 

“ Let us talk of something else,” she said. “ All 
that is past and gone. It has nothing to do with 
you, anyway. I ’ve got some advice to give you 
about keeping up this grip you ’ve got on your 
people.” 


7 


257 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


The young minister had risen to his feet while 
she spoke. He put his hands in his pockets, and 
with rounded shoulders began slowly pacing the 
room. After a turn or two he came to the desk, 
and leaned against it. 

“ I doubt if it ’s worth while going into that,” he 
said, in the solemn tone of one who feels that an 
irrevocable thing is being uttered. She waited to 
hear more, apparently. “ I think I shall go away 
— give up the ministry,” he added. 

Sister Soulsby’s eyes revealed no such shock of 
consternation as he, unconsciously, had looked for. 
They remained quite calm ; and when she spoke, 
they deepened, to fit her speech, with what he read 
to be a gaze of affectionate melancholy, — one 
might say pity. She shook her head slowly. 

“No — don’t let any one else hear you say 
that,” she replied. “ My poor young friend, it ’s 
no good to even think it. The real wisdom is to 
school yourself to move along smoothly, and not 
fret, and get the best of what ’s going. I ’ve 
known others who felt as you do, — of course 
there are times when every young man of brains 
and high notions feels that way, — but there J s no 
help for it. Those who tried to get out only 
broke themselves. Those who stayed in, and 
made the best of it — well, one of them will be a 
bishop in another ten years.” 

Theron had starter walking again. “But the 
moral degradation of it ! ” he snapped out at her, 
258 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

over his shoulder. “ I ’d rather earn the meanest 
living, at an honest trade, and be free from it.” 

“ That may all be,” responded Sister Soulsby. 
“ But it is n’t a question of what you ’d rather do. 
It ’s what you can do. How could you earn a 
living? What trade or business do you suppose 
you could take up now, and get a living out of? 
Not one, my man, not one.” 

Theron stopped and stared at her. This view 
of his capabilities came upon him with the force 
and effect of a blow. 

“ I don’t discover, myself,” he began stum- 
blingly, “ that I ’m so conspicuously inferior to the 
men I see about me who do make livings, and 
very good ones, too.” 

“ Of course you ’re not,” she replied with easy 
promptness ; “ you ’re greatly the other way, or I 
shouldn’t be taking this trouble with you. But 
you ’re what you are because you ’re where you are. 
The moment you try on being somewhere else, 
you ’re done for. In all this world nobody else 
comes to such unmerciful and universal grief as 
the unfrocked priest.” 

The phrase sent Theron’s fancy roving. “I 
know a Catholic priest,” he said irrelevantly, “ who 
does n’t believe an atom in — in things.” 

“Very likely,” said Sister Soulsby. “Most of 
us do. But you don’t hear him talking about 
going and earning his living, I ’ll bet ! Or if he 
does, he takes powerful good care not to go, all the 

2±Q 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


same. They Ve got horse-sense, those priests. 
They ’re artists, too. They know how to allow for 
the machinery behind the scenes.” 

“But it’s all so different,” urged the young 
minister ; “ the same things are not expected of 
them. Now I sat the other night and watched 
those people you got up around the altar- rail, 
groaning and shouting and crying, and the others 
jumping up and down with excitement, and Sister 
Lovejoy — did you see her? — coming out of her 
pew and regularly waltzing in the aisle, with her 
eyes shut, like a whirling dervish — I positively 
believe it was all that made me ill. I could n’t 
stand it. I can’t stand it now. I won’t go back 
to it ! Nothing shall make me ! ” 

“ Oh-h, yes, you will,” she rejoined sooth- 
ingly. “ There ’s nothing else to do. Just put a 
good face on it, and make up your mind to get 
through by treading on as few corns as possible, 
and keeping your own toes well in, and you ’ll be 
surprised how easy it ’ll all come to be. You were 
speaking of the revival business. Now that ex- 
emplifies just what I was saying, — it ’s a part of our 
machinery. Now a church is like everything else, 
— it ’s got to have a boss, a head, an authority of 
some sort, that people will listen to and mind. 
The Catholics are different, as you say. Their 
church is chuck-full of authority, — all the way from 
the Pope down to the priest, — and accordingly 
they do as they ’re told. But the Protestants, — 
260 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


your Methodists most of all, — they say ‘ No, we 
won’t have any authority, we won’t obey any boss.’ 
Very well, what happens? We who are responsible 
for running the thing, and raising the money and 
so on, — we have to put on a spurt every once in a 
while, and work up a general state of excitement ; 
and while it ’s going, don’t you see that that is the 
authority, the motive power, whatever you like to 
call it, by which things are done ? Other denomi- 
nations don’t need it. We do, and that ’s why 
we 've got it.” 

“ But the mean dishonesty of it all ! ” Theron 
broke forth. He moved about again, his bowed 
face drawn as with bodily suffering. “ The low- 
born tricks, the hypocrisies ! I feel as if I could 
never so much as look at these people here again 
without disgust.” 

“Oh, now that’s where you make your mis- 
take,” Sister Soulsby put in placidly. “ These 
people of yours are not a whit worse than other 
people. They ’ve got their good streaks and their 
bad streaks, just like the rest of us. Take them 
by and large, they ’re quite on a par with other 
folks the whole country through.” 

“ I don’t believe there ’s another congregation 
in the Conference where — where this sort of 
thing would have been needed, or, I might say, 
tolerated,” insisted Theron. 

“ Perhaps you ’re right,” the other assented ; 
“but that only shows that your people her* 
x 261 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


different from the others — not that they ’re worse. 
You don’t seem to realize : Octavius, so far as the 
Methodists are concerned, is twenty or thirty years 
behind the times. Now that has its advantages 
and its disadvantages. The church here is tough 
and coarse, and full of grit, like a grindstone ; 
and it does ministers from other more niminy- 
piminy places all sorts of good to come here once 
in a while and rub themselves up against it. It 
scours the rust and mildew off from their piety, 
and they go back singing and shouting. But of 
course it ’s had a different effect with you. You ’re 
razor- steel instead of scythe-steel, and the grind- 
ing’s been too rough and violent for you. But 
you see what I mean. These people here really 
take their primitive Methodism seriously. To 
them the profession of entire sanctification is truly a 
genuine thing. Well, don’t you see, when people 
just know that they’re saved, it doesn’t seem to 
them to matter so much what they do. They feel 
that ordinary rules may well be bent and twisted 
in the interest of people so supernaturally good as 
they are. That ’s pure human nature. It ’s always 
been like that.” 

Theron paused in his walk to look absently at 
her. “That thought,” he said, in a vague, slow 
way, “seems to be springing up in my path, 
whichever way I turn. It oppresses me, and yet 
it fascinates me, — this idea that the dead men 
have known more than we know, done more 
362 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

than we do ; that there is nothing new any- 
where ; that — ” 

“ Never mind the dead men,” interposed Sister 
Soulsby. “ Just you come and sit down here. I 
hate to have you straddling about the room when 
I ’m trying to talk to you.” 

Theron obeyed, and as he sank into the low 
seat, Sister Soulsby drew up her chair, and put her 
hand on his shoulder. Her gaze rested upon his 
with impressive steadiness. 

“ And now I want to talk seriously to you, as a 
friend,” she began. “You mustn’t breathe to any 
living soul the shadow of a hint of this nonsense 
about leaving the ministry. I could see how you 
were feeling, — I saw the book you were reading 
the first time I entered this room, — and that 
made me like you ; only I expected to find you 
mixing up more worldly gumption with your 
Renan. Well, perhaps I like you all the better 
for not having it — for being so delightfully fresh. 
At any rate, that made me sail in and straighten 
your affairs for you. And now, for God’s sake, 
keep them straight. Just put all notions of any- 
thing else out of your head. Watch your chief 
men and women, and be friends with them. 
Keep your eye open for what they think you 
ought to do, and do it. Have your own ideas as 
much as you like, read what you like, say * Damn • 
under your breath as much as you like, but don’t 
let go of your job. I ’ve knocked about too much, 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and 1 Ve seen too many promising young fellows 
cut their own throats for pure moonshine, not to 
have a right to say that.” 

Theron could not be insensible to the friendly 
hand on his shoulder, or to the strenuous sincerity 
of the voice which thus adjured him. 

“ Well,” he said vaguely, smiling up into her 
earnest eyes, “if we agree that it is moonshine.” 

“ See here ! ” she exclaimed, with renewed ani- 
mation, patting his shoulder in a brisk, automatic 
way, to point the beginnings of her confidences : 
“ I ’ll tell you something. It ’s about myself. 
I Ve got a religion of my own, and it ’s got just 
one plank in it, and that is that the time to sepa- 
rate the sheep from the goats is on Judgment 
Day, and that it can’t be done a minute before.” 

The young minister took in the thought, and 
turned it about in his mind, and smiled upon it. 

“ And that brings me to what I ’m going to tell 
you,” Sister Soulsby continued. She leaned back in 
her chair, and crossed her knees so that one well- 
shaped and artistically shod foot poised itself close 
to Theron’s hand. Her eyes dwelt upon his face 
with an engaging candor. 

“ I began life,” she said, “ as a girl by running 
away from a stupid home with a man that I knew 
was married already. After that, I supported my- 
self for a good many years, — generally, at first, on 
the stage. I ’ve been a front- ranker in Amazon 
ballets, and I ’ve been leading lady in comic opera 
264 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


companies out West. I Ve told fortunes in one 
room of a mining-camp hotel where the biggest 
game of faro in the Territory went on in another. 
I ’ve been a professional clairvoyant, and I Ve been 
a professional medium, and I Ve been within one 
vote of being indicted by a grand jury, and the 
money that bought that vote was put up by the 
smartest and most famous train-gambler between 
Omaha and ’Frisco, a gentleman who died in his 
boots and took three sheriffs deputies along with 
him to Kingdom-Come. Now, that ’s my record.’* 

Theron looked earnestly at her, and said nothing. 

“ And now take Soulsby, ** she went on. “ Of 
course I take it for granted there ’s a good deal 
that he has never felt called upon to mention. 
He has n’t what you may call a talkative tempera- 
ment. But there is also a good deal that I do 
know. He ’s been an actor, too, and to this day 
I ’d back him against Edwin Booth himself to 
recite 4 Clarence’s Dream.* And he *s been a 
medium, and then he was a travelling phrenologist, 
and for a long time he was advance agent for a 
British Blondes show, and when I first saw him he 
was lecturing on female diseases — and he had 
his little turn with a grand jury too. In fact, he 
was what you may call a regular bad old rooster.” 

Again Theron suffered the pause to lapse with- 
out comment, — save for an amorphous sort of 
conversation which he felt to be going on between 
his eyes and those of Sister Soulsby. 

26** 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“Well, then,” she resumed, “so much for us 
apart. Now about us together. We liked each 
other from the start. We compared notes, and 
we found that we had both soured on living by 
fakes, and that we were tired of the road, and 
wanted to settle down and be respectable in our 
old age. We had a little money, — enough to see 
us through a year or two. Soulsby had always 
hungered and longed to own a garden and raise 
flowers, and had never been able to stay long 
enough in one place to see so much as a bean-pod 
ripen. So we took a little place in a quiet coun- 
try village down on the Southern Tier, and he 
planted everything three deep all over the place, 
and I bought a roomful of cheap good books, 
and we started in. We took to it like ducks to 
water for a while, and I don’t say that we could n’t 
have stood it out, just doing nothing, to this very 
day; but as luck would have it, during the first 
winter there was a revival at the local Methodist 
church, and we went every evening, — at first just 
to kill time, and then because we found we liked 
the noise and excitement and general racket of the 
thing. After it was all over each of us found that 
the other had been mighty near going up to the 
rail and joining the mourners. And another thing 
had occurred to each of us, too, — that is, what 
tremendous improvements there were possible in 
the way that amateur revivalist worked up his 
business. This stuck in our crops, and we figured 
*66 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


on it all through the winter. — Well, to make a long 
story short, we finally went into the thing ourselves.” 

“ Tell me one thing,” interposed Theron. “ I ’m 
anxious to understand it all as we go along. 
Were you and he at any time sincerely converted ? 
— that is, I mean, genuinely convicted of sin 
and conscious of — you know what I mean ! ” 

“ Oh, bless you, yes,” responded Sister Soulsby. 
“ Not only once — dozens of times — I may say 
every time. We could n’t do good work if we 
were n’t. But that ’s a matter of temperament — 
of emotions.” 

“ Precisely. That was what I was getting at,” 
explained Theron. 

“ Well, then, hear what / was getting at,” she 
went on. “You were talking very loudly here 
about frauds and hypocrisies and so on, a few 
minutes ago. Now / say that Soulsby and I do 
good, and that we ’re good fellows. Now take 
him, for example. There is n’t a better citizen in 
all Chemung County than he is, or a kindlier 
neighbor, or a better or more charitable man. 
I ’ve known him to stay up a whole winter’s night 
in a poor Irishman’s stinking and freezing stable, 
trying to save his cart-horse for him, that had 
been seized with some sort of fit. The man’s 
whole livelihood, and his family’s, was in that 
horse i and when it died, Soulsby bought him an- 
other, and never told even me about it. Now that 
I call real piety, if you like.” 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ So do I,” put in Theron, cordially. 

“And this question of fraud,” pursued his com- 
panion, — “ look at it in this light. You heard us 
sing. Well, now, I was a singer, of course, but 
Soulsby hardly knew one note from another. I 
taught him to sing, and he went at it patiently and 
diligently, like a little man. And I invented that 
scheme of finding tunes which the crowd did n’t 
know, and so could n’t break in on and smother. 
I simply took Chopin, — he is full of sixths, you 
know, — and I got all sorts of melodies out of his 
waltzes and mazurkas and nocturnes and so on, 
and I trained Soulsby just to sing those sixths so 
as to make the harmony, and there you are. He 
could n’t sing by himself any more than a crow, 
but he *s got those sixths of his down to a hair. 
Now that ’s machinery, management, organization. 
We take these tunes, written by a devil-may-care 
Pole who was living with George Sand openly at 
the time, and pass ’em off on the brethren for 
hymns. It *s a fraud, yes ; but it ’s a good fraud. 
So they are all good frauds. I say frankly that 
I ’m glad that the change and the chance came to 
help Soulsby and me to be good frauds.” 

“ And the point is that I ’m to be a good fraud, 
too,” commented the young minister. 

She had risen, and he got to his feet as well. 
He instinctively sought for her hand, and pressed 
it warmly, and held it in both his, with an exuber- 
ance of gratitude and liking in his manner. 

268 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Sister Soulsby danced her eyes at him with a 
saucy little shake of the head. “ I ’m afraid you ’ll 
never make a really good fraud,” she said. “ You 
have n’t got it in you. Your intentions are all right, 
but your execution is hopelessly clumsy. I came 
up to your bedroom there twice while you were 
sick, just to say * howdy,* and you kept your eyes 
shut, and all the while a blind horse could have 
told that you were wide awake.” 

“I must have thought it was my wife,” said 
Theron. 


PART III 


CHAPTER XVIII 

When the lingering dusk finally settled down 
upon this long summer evening, the train bearing 
the Soulsbys homeward was already some score of 
miles on its way, and the Methodists of Octavius 
had nearly finished their weekly prayer-meeting. 

After the stirring events of the revival, it was 
only to be expected that this routine, home-made 
affair should suffer from a reaction. The attend- 
ance was larger than usual, perhaps, but the pro- 
ceedings were spiritless and tame. Neither the 
pastor nor his wife was present at the beginning, and 
the class-leader upon whom control devolved made 
but feeble headway against the spell of inertia which 
the hot night-air laid upon the gathering. Long 
pauses intervened between the perfunctory praise- 
offerings and supplications, and the hymns weariedly 
raised from time to time fell again in languor by 
the wayside. 

Alice came in just as people were beginning to 
hope that some one would start the Doxology, 

220 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and bring matters to a close. Her appearance 
apparently suggested this to the class-leader, for 
in a few moments the meeting had been dismissed, 
and some of the members, on their way out, were 
shaking hands with their minister’s wife, and ex- 
pressing the polite hope that he was better. The 
worried look in her face, and the obvious stains of 
recent tears upon her cheeks imparted an added 
point and fervor to these inquiries, but she replied 
to all in tones of studied tranquillity that, although 
not feeling well enough to attend prayer-meeting, 
Brother Ware was steadily recovering strength, and 
confidently expected to be in complete health by 
Sunday. They left her, and could hardly wait to 
get into the vestibule to ask one another in whis- 
pers what on earth she could have been crying 
about. 

Meanwhile Brother Ware improved his conva- 
lescent state by pacing slowly up and down under 
the elms on the side of the street opposite the 
Catholic church. There were no houses here for 
a block and more ; the sidewalk was broken in 
many places, so that passers-by avoided it ; the 
overhanging boughs shrouded it all in obscurity ; 
it was pre-eminently a place to be alone in. 

Theron had driven to the depot with his guests 
an hour before, and after a period of pleasant 
waiting on the platform, had said good-bye to them 
as the train moved away. Then he turned to 
Alice, who had also accompanied them in the car- 
27 1 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


riage, and was conscious of a certain annoyance at 
her having come. That long familiar talk of the 
afternoon had given him the feeling that he was 
entitled to bid farewell to Sister Soulsby — to both 
the Soulsbys — by himself. 

“ I am afraid folks will think it strange — neither 
of us attending the prayer-meeting,” he said, with 
a suggestion of reproof in his tone, as they left the 
station-yard. 

“ If we get back in time, I ’ll in for a min- 
ute,” answered Alice, with docility. 

“No — no,” he broke in. “I’m not equal to 
walking so fast. You run on ahead, and explain 
matters, and I will come along slowly.” 

“The hack we came in is still there in the 
yard,” the wife suggested. “ We could drive home 
in that. I don’t believe it would cost more than 
a quarter — and if you ’re feeling badly — ” 

“ But I am not feeling badly,” Theron replied, 
with frank impatience. “Only I feel — I feel 
that being alone with my thoughts would be good 
for me.” 

“ Oh, certainly — by all means ! ” Alice had 
said, and turned sharply on her heel. 

Being alone with these thoughts, Theron strolled 
aimlessly about, and did not think at all. The 
shadows gathered, and fireflies began to disclose 
their tiny gleams among the shrubbery in the gar- 
dens. A lamp-lighter came along, and passed 
him, leaving in his wake a straggling double line 
87 2 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


of lights, glowing radiantly against the black- 
green of the trees. This recalled to Theron that 
he had heard that the town council lit the street 
lamps by the almanac, and economized gas when 
moonshine was due. The idea struck him as droll, 
and he dwelt upon it in various aspects, smiling 
at some of its comic possibilities. Looking up in 
the middle of one of these whimsical conceits, 
the sportive impulse died suddenly within him. 
He realized that it was dark, and that the mass- 
ive black bulk reared against the sky on the other 
side of the road was the Catholic church. The 
other fact, that he had been there walking to 
and fro for some time, was borne in upon him 
more slowly. He turned, and resumed the pac- 
ing up and down with a still more leisurely step, 
musing upon the curious way in which people’s 
minds all unconsciously follow about where in- 
stincts and intuitions lead. 

No doubt it was what Sister Soulsby had said 
about Catholics which had insensibly guided his 
purposeless stroll in this direction. What a 
woman that was! Somehow the purport of her 
talk — striking, and even astonishing as he had 
fpund it — did not stand out so clearly in his 
memory as did the image of the woman herself. 
She must have been extremely pretty once. For 
that matter she still was a most attractive-looking 
woman. It had been a genuine pleasure to have 
her in the house — to see her intelligent responsive 

,s 273 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

face at the table — to have it in one’s power to 
make drafts at will upon the fund of sympathy and 
appreciation, of facile mirth and ready tenderness 
in those big eyes of hers. He liked that phrase 
she had used about herself, — “ a good fellow.” 
It seemed to fit her to a “ t.” And Soulsby was 
a good fellow too. All at once it occurred to him 
to wonder whether they were married or not. 

But really that was no affair of his, he reflected. 
A citizen of the intellectual world should be above 
soiling his thoughts with mean curiosities of that 
sort, and he drove the impertinent query down 
again under the surface of his mind. He refused 
to tolerate, as well, sundry vagrant imaginings which 
rose to cluster about and literalize the romance of 
her youth which Sister Soulsby had so frankly out- 
lined. He would think upon nothing but her as 
he knew her, — the kindly, quick-witted, capable 
and charming woman who had made such a bril- 
liant break in the monotony of life at that dull 
parsonage of his. The only genuine happiness in 
life must consist in having bright, smart, attractive 
women like that always about. 

The lights were visible now in the upper rooms 
of Father Forbes’ pastorate across the way. Theron 
paused for a second to consider whether he wanted 
to go over and call on the priest. He decided that 
mentally he was too fagged and flat for such an 
undertaking. He needed another sort of com- 
panionship, — some restful, soothing human con- 
274 


THE DAMNATION OF TIIERON WARE 


tact, which should exact nothing from him in 
return, but just take charge of him, with soft# 
wise words and pleasant plays of fancy, and jokes 
and — and — something of the general effect cre- 
ated by Sister Soulsby’s eyes. The thought ex- 
panded itself, and he saw that he had never 
realized before, — nay, never dreamt before — 
what a mighty part the comradeship of talented, 
sweet-natured and beautiful women must play in 
the development of genius, the achievement of 
lofty aims, out in the great world of great men. 
To know such women — ah, that would never 
fall to his hapless lot. 

The priest’s lamps blinked at him through the 
trees. He remembered that priests were sup- 
posed to be even further removed from the pos- 
sibilities of such contact than he was himself. 
His memory reverted to that horribly ugly old 
woman whom Father Forbes had spoken of as his 
housekeeper. Life under the same roof with such 
a hag must be even worse than — worse than — 

The young minister did not finish the compari- 
son, even in the privacy of his inner soul. He 
stood instead staring over at the pastorate, in a 
kind of stupor of arrested thought. The figure 
of a woman passed in view at the nearest win- 
dow — a tall figure with pale summer clothes of 
some sort, and a broad summer hat, — a flitting 
effect of diaphanous shadow between him and 
the light which streamed from the casement. 

225 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Theron felt a little shiver run over him, as if the 
delicate coolness of the changing night-air had got 
into his blood. The window was open, and his 
strained hearing thought it caught the sound of 
faint laughter. He continued to gaze at the 
place where the vision had appeared, the while a 
novel and strange perception unfolded itself upon 
his mind. 

He had come there in the hope of encountering 
Celia Madden. 

Now that he looked this fact in the face, there 
was nothing remarkable about it. In truth, it was 
simplicity itself. He was still a sick man, weak in 
body and dejected in spirits. The thought of how 
unhappy and unstrung he was came to him now 
with an insistent pathos that brought tears to his 
eyes. He was only obeying the universal law of 
nature, — the law which prompts the pallid spind- 
ling sprout of the potato in the cellar to strive 
feebly toward the light. 

From where he stood in the darkness he 
stretched out his hands in the direction of that 
open window. The gesture was his confession to 
the overhanging boughs, to the soft night-breeze, 
to the stars above, — and it bore back to him some- 
thing of the confessional’s vague and wistful solace. 
He seemed already to have drawn down into his 
soul a taste of the refreshment it craved. He 
sighed deeply, and the hot moisture smarted 
?.gain upon his eyelids, but this time not all in 
276 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


grief. With his tender compassion for himself 
there mingled now a flutter of buoyant prescience, 
of exquisite expectancy. 

Fate walked abroad this summer night. The 
street door of the pastorate opered, and in the 
flood of illumination which spread suddenly forth 
over the steps and sidewalk, Theron saw again the 
tall form, with the indefinitely light- hued flowing 
garments and the wide straw hat. He heard a 
tuneful woman’s voice call out “ Good-night, 
Maggie,” and caught no response save the abrupt 
closing of the door, which turned everything black 
again with a bang. He listened acutely for another 
instant, and then with long, noiseless strides made 
his way down his deserted side of the street. He 
moderated his pace as he turned to cross the road 
at the corner, and then, still masked by the trees, 
halted altogether, in a momentary tumult of appre- 
hension. No — yes — it was all right. The girl 
sauntered out from the total darkness into the 
dim starlight of the open corner. 

“ Why, bless me, is that you, Miss Madden ? ” 

Celia seemed to discern readily enough, through 
the accents of surprise, the identity of the tall, 
slim man who addressed her from the shadows. 

“ Good- evening, Mr. Ware,” she said, with 
prompt affability. “ I ’m so glad to find you out 
again. We heard you were ill.” 

“ I have been very ill,” responded Theron, as 
they shook hands and walked on together. He 
277 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


added, with a quaver in his voice, “ I am still far 
from strong. I really ought not to be out at all. 
But — but the longing for — for — well, I could n't 
stay in any longer. Even if it kills me, I shall be 
glad I came out to-night.” 

“ Oh, we won’t talk of killing,” said Celia. “ I 
don’t believe in illnesses myself.” 

“But you believe in collapses of the nerves,” 
put in Theron, with gentle sadness, “ in moral and 
spiritual and mental breakdowns. I remember how 
I was touched by the way you told m z you suffered 
from them. I had to take what you said then for 
granted. I had had no experience of it myself. 
But now I know what it is.” He drew a long, 
pathetic sigh. “Oh, don't I know what it is ! ” 
he repeated gloomily. 

“ Come, my friend, cheer up,” Celia purred at 
him, in soothing tones. He felt that there was 
a deliciously feminine and sisterly intuition in 
her speech, and in the helpful, nurse-like way in 
which she drew his arm through hers. He leaned 
upon this support, and was glad of it in every 
fibre of his being. 

“ Do you remember? You promised — that last 
time I saw you — to play for me,” he reminded 
her. They were passing the little covered postern 
door at the side and rear of the church as he spoke, 
and he made a half halt to point the coincidence. 

“ Oh, there ’s no one to blow the organ,” she 
said, divining his suggestion. “ And I have n’t 

2j8 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the key — and, besides, the organ is too heavy 
and severe for an invalid. It would overwhelm 
you to-night.” 

“Not as you would knowhow to play it for me,” 
urged Theron, pensively. “ I feel as if good music 
to-night would make me well again. I am really 
very ill and weak — and unhappy ! ” 

The girl seemed moved by the despairing note 
in his voice. She invited him by a sympathetic 
gesture to lean even more directly on her arm. 

“ Come home with me, and I ’ll play Chopin to 
you,” she said, in compassionate friendliness. “ He 
is the real medicine for bruised and wounded 
nerves. You shall have as much of him as you 
like.” 

The idea thus unexpectedly thrown forth spread 
itself like some vast and inexpressibly alluring vista 
before Theron’ s imagination. The spice of adven- 
ture in it fascinated his mind as well, but for a 
shrinking moment the flesh was weak. 

“I’m afraid your people would — would think 
it strange,” he faltered — and began also to recall 
that he had some people of his own who would be 
even more amazed. 

“ Nonsense,” said Celia, in fine, bold confidence, 
and with a reassuring pressure on his arm. “ I 
allow none of my people to question what I do. 
They never dream of such a preposterous thing. 
Besides, you will see none of them. Mrs. Madden 
is at the seaside, and my father and brother have 
279, 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

their own part of the house. I sha’n’t listen for a 
minute to your not coming. Come, I’m your 
doctor. I ’m to make you well again.’* 

There was further conversation, and Theron 
more or less knew that he was bearing a part in 
it, but his whole mind seemed concentrated, in a 
sort of delicious terror, upon the wonderful expe- 
rience to which every footstep brought him nearer. 
His magnetized fancy pictured a great spacious 
parlor, such as a mansion like the Maddens’ would 
of course contain, and there would be a grand 
piano, and lace curtains, and paintings in gold 
frames, and a chandelier, and velvet easy-chairs, 
and he would sit in one of these, surrounded by 
all the luxury of the rich, while Celia played to 
him. There would be servants about, he pre- 
sumed, and very likely they would recognize him, 
and of course they would talk about it to Tom, 
Dick, and Harry afterward. But he said to him- 
self defiantly that he did n’t care. 

He withdrew his arm from hers as they came 
upon the well-lighted main street. He passed no 
one who seemed to know him. Presently they 
came to the Madden place, and Celia, without 
waiting for the gravelled walk, struck obliquely 
across the lawn. Theron, who had been lagging 
behind with a certain circumspection, stepped 
briskly to her side now. Their progress over the 
soft, close-cropped turf in the dark together, with 
the scent of lilies and perfumed shrubs heavy on 
*8o 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

the night air, and the majestic bulk of the big 
silent house rising among the trees before them, 
gave him a thrilling sense of the glory of individual 
freedom. 

“ I feel a new man already,” he declared, as 
they swung along on the grass. He breathed a 
long sigh of content, and drew nearer, so that 
their shoulders touched now and again as they 
walked. In a minute more they were standing on 
the doorstep, and Theron heard the significant 
jingle of a bunch of keys which his companion 
was groping for in her elusive pocket. He was 
conscious of trembling a little at the sound. 

It seemed that, unlike other people, the Mad- 
dens did not have their parlor on the ground- 
floor, opening off the front ball. Theron stood 
in the complete darkness of this hall, till Celia had 
lit one of several candles which were in their hand- 
sticks on a sort of sideboard next the hat-rack. 
She beckoned him with a gesture of her head, and 
he followed her up a broad staircase, magnificent 
in its structural appointments of inlaid woods, and 
carpeted with what to his feet felt like down. 
The tiny light which his guide bore before her 
half revealed, as they passed in their ascent, tall 
lengths of tapestry, and the dull glint of armor 
and brazen discs in shadowed niches on the nearer 
wall. Over the stair- rail lay an open space of 
such stately dimensions, bounded by terminal 
lines of decoration so distant in the faint candle- 
281 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


flicker, that the young country minister could 
think of no word but “ palatial ” to fit it all. 

At the head of the flight, Celia led the way 
along a wide corridur to where it ended. Here, 
stretched from side to side, and suspended from 
broad hoops of a copper-like metal, was a thick 
curtain, of a uniform color which Theron at first 
thought was green, and then decided must be blue. 
She pushed its heavy folds aside, and unlocked 
another door. He passed under the curtain be- 
hind her, and closed the door. 

The room into which he had made his way was 
not at all after the fashion of any parlor he had 
ever seen. In the obscure light it was difficult to 
tell what it resembled. He made out what he 
took to be a painter’s easel, standing forth inde- 
pendently in the centre of things. There were 
rows of books on rude, low shelves. Against one 
of the two windows was a big, flat writing-table — 
or was it a drawing-table ? — littered with papers. 
Under the other window was a carpenter’s bench, 
with a large mound of something at one end cov- 
ered with a white cloth. On a table behind the 
easel rose a tall mechanical contrivance, the chief 
feature of which was a thick upright spiral screw. 
The floor was of bare wood stained brown. The 
walls of this queer room had photographs and 
pictures, taken apparently from illustrated papers, 
pinned up at random for their only ornament. 

Celia had lighted three or four other candles on 
282 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the mantel. She caught the dumfounded expres- 
sion with which her guest was surveying his sur- 
roundings, and gave a merry little laugh. 

“This is my workshop,” she explained. “I 
keep this for the things I do badly, — things I fool 
with. If I want to paint, or model in clay, or 
bind books, or write, or draw, or turn on the 
lathe, or do some carpentering, here ’s where I 
do it. All the things that make a mess which 
has to be cleaned up — they are kept out here — 
because this is as far as the servants are allowed 
to come.” 

She unlocked still another door as she spoke, 
— a door which was also concealed behind a 
curtain. 

“ Now,” she said, holding up the candle so 
that its reddish flare rounded with warmth the 
creamy fulness of her chin and throat, and glowed 
upon her hair in a flame of orange light — “ now 
I will show you what is my very own.” 


283 


CHAPTER XIX 


Theron Ware looked about him with frankly 
undisguised astonishment. 

The room in which he found himself was so 
dark at first that it yielded little to the eye, and 
that little seemed altogether beyond his compre- 
hension. His gaze helplessly followed Celia and 
her candle about as she busied herself in the work 
of illumination. When she had finished, and 
pinched out the taper, there were seven lights in 
the apartment — lights beaming softly through 
half-opaque alternating rectangles of blue and 
yellow glass. They must be set in some sort of 
lanterns around against the wall, he thought, but 
the shape of these he could hardly make out. 

Gradually his sight adapted itself to this subdued 
light, and he began to see other things. These 
queer lamps were placed, apparently, so as to 
shed a special radiance upon some statues which 
stood in the corners of the chamber, and upon 
some pictures which were embedded in the walls. 
Theron noted that the statues, the marble of 
which lost its aggressive whiteness under the 
tinted lights, were mostly of naked men and 
284 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


women; the pictures, four or five in number, 
were all variations of a single theme, — the Virgin 
Mary and the Child. 

A less untutored vision than his would have 
caught more swiftly the scheme of color and line 
in which these works of art bore their share. 
The walls of the room were in part of flat upright 
wooden columns, terminating high above in simple 
capitals, and they were all painted in pale amber 
and straw and primrose hues, irregularly wavering 
here and there toward suggestions of white. Be- 
tween these pilasters were broader panels of 
stamped leather, in gently varying shades of 
peacock blue. These contrasted colors vaguely 
interwove and mingled in what he could see of 
the shadowed ceiling far above. They were re- 
peated in the draperies and huge cushions and 
pillows of the low, wide divan which ran about 
three sides of the room. Even the floor, where 
it revealed , itself among the scattered rugs, was 
laid in a mosaic pattern of matched woods, which, 
like the rugs, gave back these same shifting blues 
and uncertain yellows. 

The fourth side of the apartment was broken in 
outline at one end by the door through which 
they had entered, and at the other by a broad, 
square opening, hung with looped-back curtains 
of a thin silken stuff. Between the two apertures 
rose against the wall what Theron took at first 
glance to be an altar. There were pyramidal rows 
285 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


of tall candles here on either side, each masked 
with a little silken hood; below, in the centre, 
a shelf-like projection supported what seemed a 
massive, carved casket, and in the beautiful intri- 
cacies of this, and the receding canopy of delicate 
ornamentation which depended above it, the domi- 
nant color was white, deepening away in its 
shadows, by tenderly minute gradations, to the 
tints which ruled the rest of the room. 

Celia lighted some of the high, thick tapers in 
these candelabra, and opened the top of the 
casket. Theron saw with surprise that she had 
uncovered the keyboard of a piano. He viewed 
with much greater amazement her next proceed- 
ing, — which was to put a cigarette between her 
lips, and, bending over one of the candles with it 
for an instant, turn to him with a filmy, opalescent 
veil of smoke above her head. 

“ Make yourself comfortable anywhere,” she said, 
with a gesture which comprehended all the divans 
and pillows in the place. “ Will you smoke ? ” 

“ I have never tried since I was a little boy,” 
said Theron, “ but I think I could. If you don’t 
mind, I should like to see.” 

Lounging at his ease on the oriental couch, 
Theron experimented cautiously upon the unac- 
customed tobacco, and looked at Celia with what 
he felt to be the confident quiet of a man of the 
world. She had thrown aside her hat, and in do- 
ing so had half released some of the heavy strands 
a£6 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

of hair coiled at the back of her head. His glance 
instinctively rested upon this wonderful hair of 
hers. There was no mistaking the sudden fasci- 
nation its disorder had for his eye. 

She stood before him with the cigarette poised 
daintily between thumb and finger of a shapely 
hand, and smiled comprehendingly down on her 
guest. 

“ I suffered the horrors of the damned with this 
hair of mine when I was a child,” she said. “ I 
daresay all children have a taste for persecuting 
red-heads ; but it ’s a specialty with Irish chil- 
dren. They get hold somehow of an ancient 
national superstition, or legend, that red hair was 
brought into Ireland by the Danes. It ’s been a 
term of reproach with us since Brian Boru’s time 
to call a child a Dane. I used to be pursued and 
baited with it every day of my life, until the one 
dream of my ambition was to get old enough to 
be a Sister of Charity, so that I might hide my 
hair under one of their big beastly white linen 
caps. I ’ve got rather away from that ideal since, 
I ’m afraid,” she added, with a droll downward 
curl of her lip. 

“ Your hair is very beautiful,” said Theron, in 
the calm tone of a connoisseur. 

“ I like it myself,” Celia admitted, and blew a 
little smoke-ring toward him. “ I ’ve made this 
whole room to match it. The colors, I mean,” 
she explained, in deference to his uplifted brows. 

2 87 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ Between us, we make up what Whistler would 
call a symphony. That reminds me — I was going 
to play for you. Let me finish the cigarette first.” 

Theron felt grateful for her reticence about the 
fact that he had laid his own aside. “ I have 
never seen a room at all like this,” he remarked. 
“ You are right ; it does fit you perfectly.” 

She nodded her sense of his appreciation. “ It 
is what I like,” she said. “It expresses me. I 
will not have anything about me — or anybody 
either — that I don’t like. I suppose if an old 
Greek could see it, it would make him sick, but 
it represents what / mean by being a Greek. It 
is as near as an Irishman can get to it.” 

“ I remember your puzzling me by saying that 
you were a Greek.” 

Celia laughed, and tossed the cigarette-end 
away. “ I ’d puzzle you more, I ’m afraid, if I 
tried to explain to you what I really meant by it. 
I divide people up into two classes, you know, — 
Greeks and Jews. Once you get hold of that 
principle, all other divisions and classifications, 
such as by race or language or nationality, seem 
pure foolishness. It is the only true division there 
is. It is just as true among negroes or wild In- 
dians who never heard of Greece or Jerusalem, 
as it is among white folks. That is the beauty 
of it. It works everywhere, always.” 

“Try it on me,” urged Theron, with a twinkling 
eye. “ Which am I? ” 


2 88 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


u Both,” said the girl, with a merry nod of the 
head. “ But now I ’ll play. I told you you were 
to hear Chopin. I prescribe him for you. He is 
the Greekiest of the Greeks. There was a nation 
where all the people were artists, where everybody 
was an intellectual aristocrat, where the Philistine 
was as unknown, as extinct, as the dodo. Chopin 
might have written his music for them.” 

“ I am interested in Shopang,” put in Theron, 
suddenly recalling Sister Soulsby’s confidences as 
to the source of her tunes. “ He lived with — 
what ’s his name — George something. We were 
speaking about him only this afternoon.” 

Celia looked down into her visitor’s face at first 
inquiringly, then with a latent grin about her lips. 
“Yes — George something,” she said, in a tone 
which mystified him. 

The Rev. Mr. Ware was sitting up, a minute 
afterward, in a ferment of awakened consciousness 
that he had never heard the piano played befoie. 
After a little, he noiselessly rearranged the cushions, 
and settled himself again in a recumbent posture. 
It was beyond his strength to follow that first im- 
pulse, and keep his mind abreast with what his 
ears took in. He sighed and lay back, and sur- 
rendered his senses to the mere unthinking charm 
of it all. 

It was the Fourth Prelude that was singing in 
the air about him, — a simple, plaintive strain 
wandering at will over a surface of steady rhythmic 

19 289 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


movement underneath, always creeping upward 
through mysteries of sweetness, always sinking 
again in cadences of semi-tones. With only a 
moment’s pause, there came the Seventh Waltz, 
— a rich, bold confusion which yet was not con- 
fused. Theron’s ears dwelt with eager delight 
upon the chasing medley of swift, tinkling sounds, 
but it left his thoughts free. 

From where he reclined, he turned his head to 
scrutinize, one by one, the statues in the corners. 
No doubt they were beautiful, — for this was a de- 
partment in which he was all humility, — and one 
of them, the figure of a broad-browed, stately, 
though thick-waisted woman, bending slightly for- 
ward and with both arms broken off, was decently 
robed from the hips downward. The others were 
not robed at all. Theron stared at them with the 
erratic, rippling jangle of the waltz in his ears, and 
felt that he possessed a new and disturbing con- 
ception of what female emancipation meant in 
these later days. Roving along the wall, his glance 
rested again upon the largest of the Virgin pic- 
tures, — a full-length figure in sweeping draperies, 
its radiant, aureoled head upturned in rapt adora- 
tion, its feet resting on a crescent moon which 
shone forth in bluish silver through festooned 
clouds of cherubs. The incongruity between the 
unashamed statues and this serene incarnation of 
holy womanhood jarred upon him for the instant. 
Then his mind went to the piano. 

. ago 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Without a break the waltz had slowed and ex- 
panded into a passage of what might be church 
music, an exquisitely modulated and gently solemn 
chant, through which a soft, lingering song roved 
capriciously, forcing the listener to wonder where 
it was coming out, even while it caressed and 
soothed to repose. 

He looked from the Madonna to Celia. Be- 
yond the carelessly drooping braids and coils of 
hair which blazed between the candles, he could 
see the outline of her brow and cheek, the noble 
contour of her lifted chin and full, modelled throat, 
all pink as the most delicate roseleaf is pink, against 
the cool lights of the altar- like wall. The sight 
convicted him in the court of his own soul as a 
prurient and mean-minded rustic. In the pres- 
ence of such a face, of such music, there ceased 
to be any such thing as nudity, and statues no 
more needed clothes than did those slow, deep, 
magnificent chords which came now, gravely accu- 
mulating their spell upon him. 

“ It is all singing ! ” the player called out to 
him over her shoulder, in a minute of rest. “ That 
is what Chopin does, — he sings ! ” 

She began, with an effect of thinking of some- 
thing else, the Sixth Nocturne, and Theron at first 
thought she was not playing anything in particular, 
so deliberately, haltingly, did the chain of charm 
unwind itself into sequence. Then it came closer 
to him than the others had done. The dreamy, 
291 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


wistful, meditative beauty of it all at once op- 
pressed and inspired him. He saw Celia’s shoul- 
ders sway under the impulse of the rubato license, 
— the privilege to invest each measure with the 
stress of the whole, to loiter, to weep, to run and 
laugh at will, — and the music she made spoke to 
him as with a human voice. There was the woo- 
ing sense of roses and moonlight, of perfumes, 
white skins, alluring languorous eyes, and then — 

“ You know this part, of course,” he heard her 
say. 

On the instant they had stepped from the dark, 
scented, starlit garden, where the nightingale sang, 
into a great cathedral. A sombre and lofty an- 
them arose, and filled the place with the splendor 
of such dignified pomp of harmony and such sug- 
gestions of measureless choral power and authority 
that Theron sat abruptly up, then was drawn re- 
sistlessly to his feet. He stood motionless in the 
strange room, feeling most of all that one should 
kneel to hear such music. 

“ This you ’ll know too, — the funeral march 
from the Second Sonata,” she was saying, before 
he realized that the end of the other had come. 
He sank upon the divan again, bending forward 
and clasping his hands tight around his knees. 
His heart beat furiously as he listened to the 
weird, mediaeval processional, with its wild, clash- 
ing chords held down in the bondage of an orderly 
sadness. There was a propelling motion in the 
292 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


thing — a sense of being borne bodily along — 
which affected him like dizziness. He breathed 
hard through the robust portions of stem, vigorous 
noise, and rocked himself to and fro when, as rosy 
morn breaks upon a storm-swept night, the drums 
are silenced for the sweet, comforting strain of sol- 
itary melody. The clanging minor harmonies into 
which the march relapses came to their abrupt 
end. Theron rose once more, and moved with a 
hesitating step to the piano. 

“ I want to rest a little,” he said, with his hand 
on her shoulder. 

“ Whew ! so do I,” exclaimed Celia, letting her 
hands fall with an exaggerated gesture of weariness. 
“ The sonatas take it out of one ! They are hide- 
ously difficult, you know. They are rarely played.” 

“ I did n’t know,” remarked Theron. She 
seemed not to mind his hand upon her shoulder, 
and he kept it there. “ 1 did n’t know anything 
about music at all. What I do know now is that 
— that this evening is an event in my life.” 

She looked up at him and smiled. He read 
unsuspected tendernesses and tolerances of friend- 
ship in the depths of her eyes, which emboldened 
him to stir the fingers of that audacious hand in a 
lingering, caressing trill upon her shoulder. The 
movement was of the faintest, but having ventured 
it, he drew his hand abruptly away. 

“ You are getting on,” she said to him. There 
was an enigmatic twinkle in the smile with which 
293 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


she continued to regard him. “ We are Helleniz- 
ing you at a great rate.” 

A sudden thought seemed to strike her. She 
shifted her eyes toward vacancy with a swift, ab- 
stracted glance, reflected for a moment, then let a 
sparkling half-wink and the dimpling beginnings 
of an almost roguish smile mark her assent to the 
conceit, whatever it might be. 

“ I will be with you in a moment,” he heard 
her say; and while the words were still in his 
ears she had risen and passed out of sight through 
the broad, open doorway to the right. The looped 
curtains fell together behind her. Presently a 
mellow light spread over their delicately trans- 
lucent surface, — a creamy, undulating radiance 
which gave the effect of moving about among the 
myriad folds of the silk. 

Theron gazed at these curtains for a little, then 
straightened his shoulders with a gesture of de- 
cision, and, turning on his heel, went over and ex- 
amined the statues in the further corners minutely. 

“ If you would like some more, I will play you 
the Berceuse now.” 

Her voice came to him with a delicious shock. 
He wheeled round and beheld her standing at the 
piano, with one hand resting, palm upward, on the 
keys. She was facing him. Her tall form was 
robed now in some shapeless, clinging drapery, 
lustrous and creamy and exquisitely soft, like the 
curtains. The wonderful hair hung free and luxu- 
294 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


riant about her neck and shoulders, and glowed 
with an intensity of fiery color which made all the 
other hues of the room pale and vague. A fillet of 
faint, sky-like blue drew a gracious span through 
the flame of red above her temples, and from this 
there rose the gleam of jewels. Her head inclined 
gently, gravely, toward him, — with the posture of 
that armless woman in marble he had been study- 
ing, — and her brown eyes, regarding him from the 
shadows, emitted light. 

“ It is a lullaby, — the only one he wrote,” she 
said, as Theron, pale-faced and with tightened lips, 
approached her. “ No — you must n’t stand there,” 
she added, sinking into the seat before the instru- 
ment ; " go back and sit where you were.” 

The most perfect of lullabies, with its swaying 
abandonment to cooing rhythm, ever and again 
rising in ripples to the point of insisting on some- 
thing, one knows not what, and then rocking, 
melting away once more, passed, so to speak, over 
Theron’s head. He leaned back upon the cush- 
ions, and watched the white, rounded forearm 
which the falling folds of this strange, statue-like 
drapery made bare. 

There was more that appealed to his mood in 
the Third Ballade. It seemed to him that there 
were words going along with it, — incoherent and 
impulsive yet very earnest words, appealing to him 
in strenuous argument and persuasion. Each time 
he almost knew what they said, and strained after 
295 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


their meaning with a passionate desire, and then 
there would come a kind of cuckoo call, and every- 
thing would swing dancing off again into a mock- 
ery of inconsequence. 

Upon the silence there fell the pure, liquid, 
mellifluous melody of a soft-throated woman sing- 
ing to her lover. 

“ It is like Heine, — simply a love-poem,” said 
the girl, over her shoulder. 

Theron followed now with all his senses, as she 
carried the Ninth Nocturne onward. The stormy 
passage, which she banged finely forth, was in 
truth a lover’s quarrel ; and then the mild, placid 
flow of sweet harmonies into which the furore sank, 
dying languorously away upon a silence all alive 
with tender memories of sound, — was that not 
also a part of love ? 

They sat motionless through a minute, — the 
man on the divan, the girl at the piano, — and 
Theron listened for what he felt must be the audi- 
ble thumping of his heart. 

Then, throwing back her head, with upturned 
face, Celia began what she had withheld for the 
last, — the Sixteenth Mazurka. This strange for- 
eign thing she played with her eyes closed, her 
head tilted obliquely so that Theron could see the 
rose-tinted, beautiful countenance, framed as if 
asleep in the billowing luxuriance of unloosed au- 
burn hair. He fancied her beholding visions as she 
wrought the music, — visions full of barbaric color 
296 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and romantic forms. As his mind swam along 
with the gliding, tricksy phantom of a tune, it 
seemed as if he too could see these visions, — as 
if he gazed at them through her eyes. 

It could not be helped. He lifted himself noise- 
lessly to his feet, and stole with caution toward 
her. He would hear the rest of this weird, volup- 
tuous fantasy standing thus, so close behind her 
that he could look down upon her full, uplifted 
face, — so close that, if she moved, that glowing 
nimbus of hair would touch him. 

There had been some curious and awkward 
pauses in this last piece, which Theron, by some 
side cerebration, had put down to her not watch- 
ing what her fingers did. There came another of 
these pauses now, — an odd, unaccountable halt in 
what seemed the middle of everything. He stared 
intently down upon her statuesque, dreaming face 
during the hush, and caught his breath as he 
waited. There fell at last a few faltering ascend- 
ing notes, making a half-finished strain, and then 
again there was silence. 

Celia opened her eyes, and poured a direct, deep 
gaze into the face above hers. Its pale lips were 
parted in suspense, and the color had faded from 
its cheeks. 

“ That is the end,” she said, and, with a turn of 
her lithe body, stood swiftly up, even while the 
echoes of the broken melody seemed panting in 
the air about her for completion. 

297 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Theron put his hands to his face, and pressed 
them tightly against eyes and brow for an instant. 
Then, throwing them aside with an expansive 
downward" sweep of the arms, and holding them 
clenched, he returned Celia’s glance. It was as 
if he had never looked into a woman’s eyes 
before. 

“ It can't be the end ! ” he heard himself say- 
ing, in a low voice charged with deep significance. 
He held her gaze in the grasp of his with impla- 
cable tenacity. There was a trouble about breath- 
ing, and the mosaic floor seemed to stir under his 
feet. He clung defiantly to the one idea of not 
releasing her eyes. 

“ How could it be the end ? ” he demanded, 
lifting an uncertain hand to his breast as he spoke, 
and spreading it there as if to control the tumultu- 
ous fluttering of his heart. “ Things don’t end 
that way ! ” 

A sharp, blinding spasm of giddiness closed 
upon and shook him, while the brave words were 
on his lips. He blinked and tottered under it, as 
it passed, and then backed humbly to his divan 
and sat down, gasping a little, and patting his 
hand on his heart. There was fright written all 
over his whitened face. 

" We — we forgot that I am a sick man,” he 
said feebly, answering Celia’s look of surprised 
inquiry with a forced, wan smile. “ I was afraid 
my heart had gone wrong.” 

298 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


She scrutinized him for a further moment, with 
growing reassurance in her air. Then, piling up 
the pillows and cushions behind him for support, 
for all the world like a big sister again, she stepped 
into the inner room, and returned with a flagon of 
quaint shape and a tiny glass. She poured this 
latter full to the brim of a thick yellowish, aromatic 
liquid, and gave it him to drink. 

“ This Benedictine is all I happen to have,” she 
said. “ Swallow it down. It will do you good.” 

Theron obeyed her. It brought tears to his 
eyes; but, upon reflection, it was grateful and 
warming. He did feel better almost immediately. 
A great wave of comfort seemed to enfold him as 
he settled himself back on the divan. For that 
one flashing instant he had thought that he was 
dying. He drew a long grateful breath of relief, 
and smiled his content. 

Celia had seated herself beside him, a little away. 
She sat with her head against the wall, and one 
foot curled under her, and almost faced him. 

“ I dare say we forced the pace a little,” she 
remarked, after a pause, looking down at the floor, 
with the puckers of a ruminating amusement play- 
ing in the corners of her mouth. “ It does n’t do 
for a man to get to be a Greek all of a sudden. 
He must work along up to it gradually.” 

He remembered the music. “Oh, if I only 
knew how to tell you,” he murmured ecstatically, 
“ what a revelation your playing has been to me ! 
2 99 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


I had never imagined anything like it. I shall 
think of it to my dying day.” 

He began to remember as well the spirit that 
was in the air when the music ended. The details 
of what he had felt and said rose vaguely in his 
mind. Pondering them, his eye roved past Celia’s 
white-robed figure to the broad, open doorway 
beyond. The curtains behind which she had 
disappeared were again parted and fastened back. 
A dim light was burning within, out of sight, and 
its faint illumination disclosed a room filled with 
white marbles, white silks, white draperies of vary- 
ing sorts, which shaped themselves, as he looked, 
into the canopy and trappings of an extravagantly 
over-sized and sumptuous bed. He looked away 
again. 

“ I wish you would tell me what you really 
mean by that Greek idea of yours,” he said with 
the abruptness of confusion. 

Celia did not display much enthusiasm in the 
tone of her answer. “Oh,” she said almost indif- 
ferently, “ lots of things. Absolute freedom from 
moral bugbears, for one thing. The recognition 
that beauty is the only thing in life that is worth 
while. The courage to kick out of one’s life every- 
thing that is n’t worth while ; and so on.” 

“ But,” said Theron, watching the mingled 
delicacy and power of the bared arm and the 
shapely grace of the hand which she had lifted to 
her face, “ I am going to get you to teach it all to 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


me.” The memories began crowding in upon him 
now, and the baffling note upon which the mazurka 
had stopped short chimed like a tuning-fork in his 
ears. “ I want to be a Greek myself, if you ’re 
one. I want to get as close to you — to your 
ideal, that is, as I can. You open up to me a 
whole world that I had not even dreamed existed. 
We swore our friendship long ago, you know : 
and now, after to-night — you and the music have 
decided me. I am going to put the things out of 
my life that are not worth while. Only you must 
help me ; you must tell me how to begin.” 

He looked up as he spoke, to enforce the almost 
tender entreaty of his words. The spectacle of 
a yawn, only fractionally concealed behind those 
talented fingers, chilled his soft speech, and sent a 
flush over his face. He rose on the instant. 

Celia was nothing abashed at his discovery. 
She laughed gayly in confession of her fault, and 
held her hand out to let him help her disentangle 
her foot from her draperies, and get off the divan. 
It seemed to be her meaning that he should 
continue holding her hand after she was also 
standing. 

“You forgive me, don’t you?” she urged 
smilingly. “ Chopin always first excites me, theu 
sends me to sleep. You see how you sleep 
to-night ! ” 

The brown, velvety eyes rested upon him, from 
under their heavy lids, with a languorous kindli- 
501 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

ness. Her warm, large palm clasped his in frank 
liking. 

“ I don’t want to sleep at all,” Mr. Ware was 
impelled to say. “ I want to lie awake and think 
about — about everything all over again.” 

She smiled drowsily. “And you’re sure you 
feel strong enough to walk home?” 

“Yes,” he replied, with a lingering dilatory 
note, which deepened upon reflection into a sigh. 
“ Oh, yes.” 

He followed her and her candle down the 
magnificent stairway again. She blew the light 
out in the hall, and, opening the front door, stood 
with him for a silent moment on the threshold. 
Then they shook hands once more, and with a 
whispered good- night, parted. 

Celia, returning to the blue and yellow room, 
lighted a cigarette and helped herself to some 
Benedictine in the glass which Theron had used. 
She looked meditatively at this little glass for a 
moment, turning it about in her fingers with a 
smile. The smile warmed itself suddenly into 
a joyous laugh. She tossed the glass aside, and, 
holding out her flowing skirts with both hands, 
executed a swinging pirouette in front of the 
gravely beautiful statue of the armless woman. 


302 


CHAPTER XX 


It was apparent to the Rev. Theron Ware, from 
the very first moment of waking next morning, 
that both he and the world had changed over night. 
The metamorphosis, in the harsh toils of which he 
had been laboring blindly so long, was accomplished 
He stood forth, so to speak, in a new skin, and 
looked about him, with perceptions of quite an 
altered kind, upon what seemed in every way a 
fresh existence. He lacked even the impulse to 
turn round and inspect the cocoon from which he 
had emerged. Let the past bury the past. He 
had no vestige of interest in it. 

The change was not premature. He found 
himself not in the least confused by it, or 
frightened. Before he had finished shaving, he 
knew himself to be easily and comfortably at 
home in his new state, and master of all its 
requirements. 

It seemed as if Alice, too, recognized that he 
had become another man, when he went down 
and took his chair at the breakfast table. They 
had exchanged no words since their parting in 
the depot-yard the previous evening, — an event 
3°3 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


now faded off into remote vagueness in Theron’s 
mind. He smiled brilliantly in answer to the fur- 
tive, half-sullen, half-curious glance she stole at 
him, as she brought the dishes in. 

“ Ah ! potatoes warmed up in cream ! ” he said, 
with hearty pleasure in his tone. “ What a mind- 
reader you are, to be sure ! ” 

“ I ’m glad you ’re feeling so much better,” she 
said briefly, taking her seat. 

“ Better? ” he returned. “ I ’m a new being ! ” 

She ventured to look him over more freely, upon 
this assurance. He perceived and catalogued, one 
by one, the emotions which the small brain was ex- 
pressing through those shallow blue eyes of hers. 
She was turning over this, that, and the other hostile 
thought and childish grievance, — most of all she 
was dallying with the idea of asking him where he 
had been till after midnight. He smiled affably 
in the face of this scattering fire of peevish 
glances, and did not dream of resenting any 
phase of them all. 

“ I am going down to Thurston’s this morning, 
and order that piano sent up to-day,” he announced 
presently, in a casual way. 

“ Why, Theron, can we afford it ? ” the wife 
asked, regarding him with surprise. 

“Oh, easily enough,” he replied light-heartedly. 
“ You know they ’ve increased my salary.” 

She shook her head. “ No, I did n’t. How 
should I? You don’t realize it,” she went on, 
•i°4 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


dolefully, “ but you ’re getting so you don’t tell 
me the least thing about your affairs nowadays.” 

Theron laughed aloud. “You ought to be 
grateful, — such melancholy affairs as mine have 
been till now,” he declared, — “ that is, if it were n’t 
absurd to think such a thing.” Then, more soberly, 
he explained : “No, my girl, it is you who don’t 
realize. I am carrying big projects in my mind, — 
big, ambitious thoughts and plans upon which great 
things depend. They no doubt make me seem 
preoccupied and absent-minded ; but it is a wife’s 
part to understand, and make allowances, and not 
intrude trifles which may throw everything out of 
gear. Don’t think I ’m scolding, my girl. I only 
speak to reassure you and — and help you to com- 
prehend. Of course I know that you wouldn’t 
willingly embarrass my — my career.” 

“ Of course not,” responded Alice, dubiously ; 
“but — but— ” 

“ But what ? ” Theron felt compelled by civility 
to say, though on the instant he reproached him- 
self for the weakness of it. 

“Well — I hardly know how to say it,” she fal- 
tered, “ but it was nicer in the old days, before you 
bothered your head about big projects, and your 
career, as you call it, and were just a good, earnest, 
simple young servant of the Lord. Oh, Theron ! ” 
she broke forth suddenly, with tearful zeal, “I 
get sometimes lately almost scared lest you should 
turn out to be a — a backslider /” 

3°S 


20 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


The husband sat upright, and hardened his 
countenance. But yesterday the word would have 
had in it all sorts of inherited terrors for him. 
This morning’s dawn of a new existence revealed 
it as merely an empty and stupid epithet. 

“ These are things not to be said/’ he admon- 
ished her, after a moment’s pause, and speaking 
with carefully measured austerity. “ Least of all 
are they to be said to a clergyman — by his 
wife.” 

It was on the tip of Alice’s tongue to retort, 
4t Better by his wife than by outsiders ! ” but 
she bit her lips, and kept the gibe back. A 
rebuke of this form and gravity was a novelty in 
their relations. The fear that it had been merited 
troubled, even while it did not convince, her mind, 
and the puzzled apprehension was to be read plainly 
enough on her face. 

Theron, noting it, saw a good deal more behind. 
Really, it was amazing how much wiser he had 
grown all at once. He had been married for years, 
and it was only this morning that he suddenly dis- 
covered how a wife ought to be handled. He con- 
tinued to look sternly away into space for a little. 
Then his brows relaxed slowly and under the visi- 
ble influence of melting considerations. He nodded 
his head, turned toward her abruptly, and broke 
the silence with labored amiability. 

“ Come, come — the day began so pleasantly — 
it was so good to feel well again — let us talk about 
*o6 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the piano instead. That is,” he added, with an 
obvious overture to playfulness, “ if the thought 
of having a piano is not too distasteful to you.” 

Alice yielded almost effusively to his altered 
mood. They went together into the sitting-room, 
to measure and decide between the two available 
spaces which were at their disposal, and he insisted 
with resolute magnanimity on her settling this ques- 
tion entirely by herself. When at last he mentioned 
the fact that it was Friday, and he would look over 
some sermon memoranda before he went out, Alice 
retired to the kitchen in openly cheerful spirits. 

Theron spread some old manuscript sermons 
before him on his desk, and took down his scrib- 
bling-book as well. But there his application 
flagged, and he surrendered himself instead, chin 
on hand, to staring out at the rhododendron in 
the yard. He recalled how he had seen Soulsby 
patiently studying this identical bush. The notion 
of Soulsby, not knowing at all how to sing, yet dili- 
gently learning those sixths, brought a smile to his 
mind ; and then he seemed to hear Celia calling 
out over her shoulder, “ That *s what Chopin does, 
— he sings 1 ” The spirit of that wonderful music 
came back to him, enfolded him in its wings. It 
seemed to raise itself up, — a palpable barrier be- 
tween him and all that he had known and felt 
and done before. That was his new birth, — that 
marvellous night with the piano. The conceit 
pleased him, — not the less because there flashed 
zoj 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


along with it the thought that it was a poet that 
had been born. Yes; the former country lout, 
the narrow zealot, the untutored slave groping 
about in the dark after silly superstitions, cring- 
ing at the scowl of mean Pierces and Winches, 
was dead. There was an end of him, and good 
riddance. In his place there had been born a 
Poet, — he spelled the word out now unabashed, 
— a child of light, a lover of beauty and sweet 
sounds, a recognizable brother to Renan and 
Chopin — and Celia ! 

Out of the soothing, tenderly grateful revery, a 
practical suggestion suddenly took shape. He 
acted upon it without a moment’s delay, getting 
out his letter-pad, and writing hurriedly, — 

“ Dear Miss Madden, — Life will be more toler- 
able to me if before nightfall I can know that 
there is a piano under my roof. Even if it 
remains dumb, it will be some comfort to have 
it here and look at it, and imagine how a great 
master might make it speak. 

“ Would it be too much to beg you to look in 
at Thurston’s, say at eleven this forenoon, and give 
me the inestimable benefit of your judgment in 
selecting an instrument? 

“ Do not trouble to answer this, fo. I am leav- 
ing home now, but shall call at Thurston’s at 
eleven, and wait. 

“ Thanking you in anticipation, 

“lam — ” 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WAlJtf. 


Here Theron’s fluency came to a sharp hd\ 
There :vere adverbs enough and to spare on the 
point of his pen, but the right one was not easy to 
come at. “ Gratefully,” “ faithfully,” “ sincerely,” 
“ truly,” — each in turn struck a false note. He 
felt himself not quite any of these things. At last 
he decided to write just the simple word “ yours,” 
and then wavered between satisfaction at his 
boldness, dread lest he had been over-bold, and, 
worst of the lot, fear that she would not notice it 
one way or the other, — all the while he sealed 
and addressed the letter, put it carefully in an 
inner pocket, and got his hat. 

There was a moment’s hesitation as to notifying 
the kitchen of his departure. The interests of 
domestic discipline seemed to point the other 
way. He walked softly through the hall, and let 
himself out by the front door without a sound. 

Down by the canal bridge he picked out an idle 
boy to his mind, — a lad whose aspect appeared to 
promise intelligence as a messenger, combined with 
large impartiality in sectarian matters. He was to 
have ten cents on his return ; and he might report 
himself to his patron at the bookstore yonder. 

Theron was grateful to the old bookseller for 
remaining at his desk in the rear. There was a 
tacit compliment in the suggestion that he was not 
a mere customer, demanding instant attention. 
Besides, there was no keeping “ Thurston’s ” out 
of conversations in this place. 

309 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Loitering along the shelves, the young minister’s 
eye suddenly found itself arrested by a name on a 
cover. There were a dozen narrow volumes in 
uniform binding, huddled together under a card- 
board label of “ Eminent Women Series.” Oddly 
enough, one of these bore the title " George 
Sand.” Theron saw there must be some mistake, 
as he took the book down, and opened it. His 
glance hit by accident upon the name of Chopin. 
Then he read attentively until almost the stroke 
of eleven. 

“ We have to make ourselves acquainted with 
all sorts of queer phases of life,” he explained in 
self-defence to the old bookseller, then counting 
out the money for the book from his lean purse. 
He smiled as he added, “ There seems something 
almost wrong about taking advantage of the clergy- 
man’s discount for a life of George Sand.” 

“ I don’t know,” answered the other, pleasantly. 
M Guess she was n’t so much different from the 
rest of ’em, — except that she did n’t mind ap- 
pearances. We know about her. We don’t know 
about the others.” 

“ I must hurry,” said Theron, turning on his 
heel. The haste with which he strode out of the 
store, crossed the street, and made his way toward 
Thurston’s, did not prevent his thinking much upon 
the astonishing things he had encountered in this 
book. Their relation to Celia forced itself more and 
more upon his mind. He could recall the twinkle 
310 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

in her eye, the sub- mockery in her tone, as she 
commented with that half-contemptuous “ Yes — 
George something ! ” upon his blundering igno- 
rance. His mortification at having thus exposed 
his dull rusticity was swallowed up in conjectures 
as to just what her tolerant familiarity with such 
things involved. He had never before met a 
young unmarried woman who would have con- 
fessed to him any such knowledge. But then, of 
course, he had never known a girl who resembled 
Celia in any other way. He recognized vaguely 
that he must provide himself with an entire new 
set of standards by which to measure and com- 
prehend her. But it was for the moment more 
interesting to wonder what her standards were. 
Did she object to George Sand’s behavior? Or 
did she sympathize with that sort of thing? Did 
those statues, and the loose-flowing diaphonous 
toga and unbound hair, the cigarettes, the fiery 
liqueur, the deliberately sensuous music, — was he 
to believe that they signified — ? 

“ Good- morning, Mr. Ware. You have managed 
by a miracle to hit on one of my punctual days,” 
said Celia. 

She was standing on the doorstep, at the 
entrance to the musical department of Thurston’s. 
He had not noticed before the fact that the sun 
was shining. The full glare of its strong light, 
enveloping her figure as she stood, and drawing 
the dazzled eye for relief to the bower of softened 
3 “ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


color, close beneath her parasol of creamy silk and 
lace, was what struck him now first of all. It was 
as if Celia had brought the sun with her. 

Theron shook hands with her, and found joy in 
the perception that his own hand trembled. He 
put boldly into words the thought that came to him. 

“ It was generous of you,” he said, “ to wait 
for me out here, where all might delight in the 
sight of you, instead of squandering the privi- 
lege on a handful of clerks inside.” 

Miss Madden beamed upon him, and nodded 
approval. 

“ Alcibiades never turned a prettier compli- 
ment,” she remarked. They went in together at 
this, and Theron made a note of the name. 

During the ensuing half-hour, the young min- 
ister followed about even more humbly than the 
clerks in Celia’s commanding wake. There were 
a good many pianos in the big show-room over- 
head, and Theron found himself almost awed by 
their size and brilliancy of polish, and the thought 
of the tremendous sum of money they represented 
altogether. Not so with the organist. She ordered 
them rolled around this way or that, as if they had 
been so many checkers on a draught-board. She 
threw back their covers with the scant ceremony 
of a dispensary dentist opening paupers’ mouths. 
She exploited their several capacities with master- 
ful hands, not deigning to seat herself, but just 
slightly bending forward, and sweeping her fingers 
_ 312 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


up and down their keyboards, — able, domineer- 
ing fingers which pounded, tinkled, meditated, 
assented, condemned, all in a flash, and amid 
what affected the layman’s ears as a hopelessly 
discordant hubbub. 

Theron moved about in the group, nursing her 
parasol in his arms, and watching her. The exag- 
gerated deference which the clerks and salesmen 
showed to her as the rich Miss Madden, seemed to 
him to be mixed with a certain assertion of the 
claims of good-fellowship on the score of her being 
a musician. There undoubtedly was a sense of 
freemasonry between them. They alluded con- 
tinually in technical terms to matters of which he 
knew nothing, and were amused at remarks of hers 
which to him carried no meaning whatever. It 
was evident that the young men liked her, and 
that their liking pleased her. It thrilled him to 
think that she knew he liked her, too, and to 
recall what abundant proofs she had given that 
here, also, she had pleasure in the fact. He clung 
insistently to the memory of these evidences. 
They helped him to resist a disagreeable tendency 
to feel himself an intruder, an outsider, among 
these pianoforte experts. 

When it was all over, Celia waved the others 
aside, and talked with Theron. “ I suppose you 
want me to tell you the truth,” she said. “ There ’s 
nothing here really good. It is always much 
better to buy of the makers direct.” 

- 3*3 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

« Do they sell on the instalment plan ? ” he 
asked. There was a wistful effect in his voice 
which caught her attention. 

She looked away — out through the window on 
the street below — for a moment. Then her eyes 
returned to his, and regarded him with a comfort- 
ing, friendly, half- motherly glance, recalling for 
all the world the way Sister Soulsby had looked at 
him at odd times. 

“ Oh, you want it at once — I see,” she re- 
marked softly. “Well, this Adelberger is the 
best value for the money.” 

Mr. Ware followed her finger, and beheld with 
dismay that it pointed toward the largest instru- 
ment in the room, — a veritable leviathan among 
pianos. The price of this had been mentioned as 
$600* He turned over the fact that this was two- 
thirds his yearly salary, and found the courage to 
shake his head. 

“ It would be too large — much too large — for 
the room,” he explained. “And, besides, it is 
more than I like to pay — or can pay, for that 
matter.” It was pitiful to be explaining such 
details, but there was no help for it. 

They picked out a smaller one, which Celia said 
was at least of fair quality. “ Now leave all the 
bargaining to me,” she adjured him. “These 
prices that they talk about in the piano trade are 
all in the air. There are tremendous discounts, ii 
one knows how to insist upon them. All you have 
- 3*4 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


to do is to tell them to send it to your house — - 
you wanted it to-day, you said ? ” 

“ Yes — in memory of yesterday,” he mur- 
mured. 

She herself gave the directions, and Thurston’s 
people, now all salesmen again, bowed grateful 
acquiescence. Then she sailed regally across the 
room and down the stairs, drawing Theron in her 
train. The hirelings made salaams to him as 
well ; it would have been impossible to interpose 
anything so trivial and squalid as talk about terms 
and dates of payment. 

“ I am ever so much obliged to you,” he said 
fervently, in the comparative solitude of the lower 
floor. She had paused to look at something in the 
book-department. 

“ Of course I was entirely at your service ; don’t 
mention it,” she replied, reaching forth her hand 
in an absent way for her parasol. 

He held up instead the volume he had pur- 
chased. “ Guess what that is ! You never would 
guess in this wide world ! ” His manner was sur- 
charged with a sense of the surreptitious. 

“ Well, then, there ’s no good trying, is there?” 
commented Celia, her glance roving again toward 
the shelves. 

“ It is a life of George Sand,” whispered Theron. 
“ I ’ve been reading it this morning — all the 
ChoDin oart — while I was waiting for you.” 

iu ms surprise, mere was an appareniiy ais- 
3i5 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


pleased contraction of her brows as he made this 
revelation. For the instant, a dreadful fear of 
having offended her seized upon and sickened him. 
But then her face cleared, as by magic. She 
smiled, and let her eyes twinkle in laughter at him, 
and lifted a forefinger in the most winning mock- 
ery of admonition. 

“ Naughty ! naughty ! ” she murmured back, 
with a roguishly solemn wink. 

He had no response ready for this, but mutely 
handed her the parasol. The situation had sud- 
denly grown too confused for words, or even se- 
quent thoughts. Uppermost across the hurly-burly 
of his mind there scudded the singular reflection 
that he should never hear her play on that new 
piano of his. Even as it flashed by out of sight, 
he recognized it for one of the griefs of his life ; 
and the darkness which followed seemed nothing 
but a revolt against the idea of having a piano at 
all. He would countermand the order. He would 
— but she was speaking again. 

They had strolled toward the door, and her 
voice was as placidly conventional as if the talk 
had never strayed from the subject of pianos. 
Theron with an effort pulled himself together, and 
laid hold of her words. 

“ I suppose you will be going the other way,” 
she was saying. “ I shall have to be at the church 
all day. We have just got a new Mass over from 
Vienna, and I ’m head over heels in work at it. I 
3 ,6 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


can have Father Forbes to myself to-day, too. 
That bear of a doctor has got the rheumatism, and 
can’t come out of his cave, thank Heaven ! ” 

And then she was receding from view, up the 
sunlit, busy sidewalk, and Theron, standing on the 
doorstep, ruefully rubbed his chin. She had said 
he was going the other way, and, after a little pause, 
he made her words good, though each step he took 
seemed all in despite of his personal inclinations. 
Some of the passers-by bowed to him, and one or 
two paused as if to shake hands and exchange 
greetings. He nodded responses mechanically, 
but did not stop. It was as if he feared to inter- 
rupt the process of lifting his reluctant feet and 
propelling them forward, lest they should wheel 
and scuttle off in the opposite direction. 


CHAPTER XXI 


Deliberate as his progress was, the diminishing 
number of store-fronts along the sidewalk, and the 
increasing proportion of picket-fences enclosing 
domestic lawns, forced upon Theron’s attention 
the fact that he was nearing home. It was a trifle 
past the hour for his midday meal. He was not 
in the least hungry; still less did he feel any 
desire just now to sit about in that library living- 
room of his. Why should he go home at all? 
There was no reason whatever — save that Alice 
would be expecting him. Upon reflection, that 
hardly amounted to a reason. Wives, with their 
limited grasp of the realities of life, were always 
expecting their husbands to do things which it 
turned out not to be feasible for them to do. The 
customary male animal spent a considerable part 
of his life in explaining to his mate why it had 
been necessary to disappoint or upset her little 
plans for his comings and goings. It was in the 
very nature of things that it should be so. 

Sustained by these considerations, Mr. Ware 
slackened his steps, then halted irresolutely, and 
after a minute’s hesitation, entered the small tem- 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


perance restaurant before which, as by intuition, 
he had paused. ,The elderly woman who placed 
on the tiny table before him the tea and rolls he 
ordered, was entirely unknown to him, he felt sure 
yet. none the less she smiled at him, and spoke 
almost familiarly, — 

“ I suppose Mrs. Ware is at the seaside, and 
you are keeping bachelor’s hall?” 

“ Not quite that,” he responded stiffly, and hur- 
ried through the meagre and distasteful repast, to 
avoid any further conversation. 

There was an idea underlying her remark, how- 
ever, which recurred to him when he had paid his 
ten cents and got out on the street again. There 
was something interesting in the thought of Alice 
at the seaside. Neither of them had ever laid eyes 
on salt water, but Theron took for granted the 
most extravagant landsman’s conception of its cur- 
ative and invigorating powers. It was apparent to 
him that he was going to pay much greater atten- 
tion to Alice’s happiness and well-being in the 
future than he had latterly done. He had bought 
her, this very day, a superb new piano. He was 
going to simply insist on her having a hired girl 
And this seaside notion, — why, that was best of 
all. 

His fancy built up pleasant visions of her feast- 
ing her delighted eyes upon the marvel of a great 
ocean storm, or roaming along a beach strewn with 
wonderful marine shells, exhibiting an innocent joy 
3 T 9 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


in their beauty. The fresh sea-breeze blew through 
her hair, as he saw her in mind’s eye, and brought 
the hardy flush of health back upon her rather 
pallid cheeks. He was prepared already hardly to 
know her, so robust and revivified would she have 
become, by the time he went down to the depot 
to meet her on her return. 

For his imagination stopped short of seeing 
himself at the seaside. It sketched instead pic- 
tures of whole weeks of solitary academic calm, 
alone with his books and his thoughts. The facts 
that he had no books, and that nobody dreamed of 
interfering with his thoughts, subordinated them- 
selves humbly to his mood. The prospect, as he 
mused fondly upon it, expanded to embrace the 
priest’s and the doctor’s libraries; the thoughts 
which he longed to be alone with involved close 
communion with their thoughts. It could not but 
prove a season of immense mental stimulation and 
ethical broadening. It would have its lofty poetic 
and artistic side as well ; the languorous melodies 
of Chopin stole over his revery, as he dwelt upon 
these things, and soft azure and golden lights 
modelled forth the exquisite outlines of tall marble 
forms. 

He opened the gate leading to Dr. Ledsmar’s 
house. His walk had brought him quite out of 
the town, and up, by a broad main highway which 
yet took on all sorts of sylvan charms, to a com- 
manding site on the hillside. Below, in the valley, 
4$20 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


lay Octavius, at one end half-hidden in factory 
smoke, at the other, where narrow bands of water 
gleamed upon the surface of a broad plain piled 
symmetrically with lumber, presenting an oddly 
incongruous suggestion of forest odors and the 
simplicity of the wilderness. In the middle dis- 
tance, on gradually rising ground, stretched a wide 
belt of dense, artificial foliage, peeping through 
which tiled turrets and ornamented chimneys 
marked the polite residences of those who, though 
they neither stoked the furnace fires to the west, 
nor sawed the lumber on the east, lived in purple 
and fine linen from the profits of this toil. Nearer 
at hand, pastures with grazing cows on the one 
side of the road, and the high, weather-stained 
board fence of the race-course on the other, com- 
pleted the jumble of primitive rusticity and urban 
complications characterizing the whole picture. 

Dr. Ledsmar’s house, toward which Theron’s 
impulses had been secretly leading him ever since 
Celia’s parting remark about the rheumatism, 
was of that spacious and satisfying order of old- 
fashioned houses which men of leisure and means 
built for themselves while the early traditions of 
a sparse and contented homogeneous population 
were still strong in the Republic. There was a hos- 
pitable look about its wide veranda, its broad, low 
bulk, and its big, double front door, which did not 
fit at all with the sketch of a man-hating recluse 
that the doctor had drawn of himself. 

32 T 


i'HE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

Theron had prepared his mind for the effect of 
being admitted by a Chinaman, and was taken 
somewhat aback when the door was opened by 
the doctor himself. His reception was pleasant 
enough, almost cordial, but the sense of awkward- 
ness followed him into his host’s inner room and 
rested heavily upon his opening speech. 

“ I heard, quite by accident, that you were ill,” 
he said, laying aside his hat. 

“ It ’s nothing at all,” replied Ledsmar. “ Merely 
a stiff shoulder that I wear from time to time in 
memory of my father. It ought to be quite gone 
by nightfall. It was good of you to come, all the 
same. Sit down if you can find a chair. As usual, 
we are littered up to our eyes here. That ’s it, — 
throw those things on the floor.” 

Mr. Ware carefully deposited an armful of 
pamphlets on the rug at his feet, and sat down. 
Litter was indeed the word for what he saw about 
him. Bookcases, chairs, tables, the comers of 
the floor, were all buried deep under disorderly 
strata of papers, diagrams, and opened books. 
One could hardly walk about without treading on 
them. The dust which danced up into the bar 
of sunshine streaming in from the window, as the 
doctor stepped across to another chair, gave Theron 
new ideas about the value of Chinese servants. 

“ I must thank you, first of all, doctor,” he 
began, “ for your kindness in coming when 1 was 
ill. i I was sick, and ye visited me.’ ” 


1'Hfc DAMNATION OF TtfERON WARE 


“ You must n’t think of it that way,” said Leds* 
mar ; “ your friend came for me, and of course I 
went; and gladly too. There was nothing that 
I could do, or that anybody could do. Very 
interesting man, that friend of yours. And his 
wife, too, — both quite out of the common. I 
don’t know when I ’ve seen two such really genu- 
ine people. I should like to have known more of 
them. Are they still here ? ” 

“They went yesterday,” Theron replied. His 
earlier shyness had worn off, and he felt comfort- 
ably at his ease. “ I don’t know,” he went on, 
“ that the word ‘ genuine ’ is just what would have 
occurred to me to describe the Soulsbys. They 
are very interesting people, as you say, — most in- 
teresting, — and there was a time, I dare say, when 
I should have believed in their sincerity. But oi 
course I saw them and their performance from the 
inside, — like one on the stage of a theatre, you 
know, instead of in the audience, and — well, I 
understand things better than I used to.” 

The doctor looked over his spectacles at him 
with a suggestion of inquiry in his glance, and 
Theron continued : “ I had several long talks with 
her ; she told me very frankly the whole story of 
her life — and — and it was decidedly queer, I can 
assure you ! I may say to you — you will under- 
stand what I mean — that since my talk with you, 
and the books you lent me, I see many things dif- 
ferently. Indeed, when I think upon it sometimes 
. 3 2 3 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


my old state of mind seems quite incredible to 
me. I can use no word for my new state short of 
illumination.” 

Dr. Ledsmar continued to regard his guest with 
that calm, interrogatory scrutiny of his. He did 
not seem disposed to take up the great issue of 
illumination. “ I suppose,” he said after a little, 
“ no woman can come in contact with a priest for 
any length of time without telling him the 1 story 
of her life,’ as you call it. They all do it. The 
thing amounts to a law.” 

The young minister’s veins responded with a 
pleasurable thrill to the use of the word “ priest ” 
in obvious allusion to himself. “ Perhaps in fair- 
ness I ought to explain,” he said, “that in her 
case it was only done in the course of a long talk 
about myself. I might say that it was by way of 
kindly warning to me. She saw how I had be- 
come unsettled in many — many of my former 
views — and she was nervous lest this should lead 
me to — to — ” 

“To throw up the priesthood,” the doctor in- 
terposed upon his hesitation. “ Yes, I know the 
tribe. Why, my dear sir, your entire profession 
would have perished from the memory of man- 
kind, if it had n’t been for women. It is a very 
curious subject. Lots of thinkers have dipped 
into it, but no one has gone resolutely in with a 
search-light and exploited the whole thing. Our 
boys, for instance, traverse in their younger years 
3 2 4 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


all the stages of the childhood of the race. They 
have terrifying dreams of awful monsters and giant 
animals of which they have never so much as heard 
in their waking hours ; they pass through the lust 
for digging caves, building fires, sleeping out in 
the woods, hunting with bows and arrows, — all 
remote ancestral impulses ; they play games with 
stones, marbles, and so on at regular stated periods 
of the year which they instinctively know, just as 
they were played in the Bronze Age, and heaven 
only knows how much earlier. But the boy goes 
through all this, and leaves it behind him, — so 
completely that the grown man feels himself more 
a stranger among boys of his own place who are 
thinking and doing precisely the things he thought 
and did a few years before, than he would among 
Kurds or Esquimaux. But the woman is totally 
different. She is infinitely more precocious as a 
girl. At an age when her slow brother is still 
stubbing along somewhere in the neolithic period, 
she has flown way ahead to a kind of mediaeval 
stage, or dawn of mediaevalism, which is peculiarly 
her own. Having got there, she stays there ; she 
dies there. The boy passes her, as the tortoise 
did the hare. He goes on, if he is a philosopher, 
and lets her remain in the dark ages, where she 
belongs. If he happens to be a fool, which is 
customary, he stops and hangs around in her 
vicinity.” 

Theron smiled. “We priests,” he said, and 

^ 3 2 5 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

paused again to enjoy the words, — “ I suppose I 
oughtn’t to inquire too closely just where we 
belong in the procession.” 

“ We are considering the question imperson- 
ally,” said the doctor. “ First of all, what you 
regard as religion is especially calculated to attract 
women. They remain as superstitious to-day, 
down in the marrow of their bones, as they were 
ten thousand years ago. Even the cleverest of 
them are secretly afraid of omens, and respect 
auguries. Think of the broadest women you 
know. One of them will throw salt over her 
shoulder if she spills it. Another drinks money 
from her cup by skimming the bubbles in a spoon. 
Another forecasts her future by the arrangement 
of tea-grounds. They make the constituency to 
which an institution based on mysteries, miracles, 
and the supernatural generally, would naturally 
appeal. Secondly, there is the personality of the 
priest.” 

“ Yes,” assented Ware. There rose up before 
rim, on the instant, the graceful, portly figure and 
strong, comely face of Father Forbes. 

“ Women are not a metaphysical people. They 
do not easily follow abstractions. They want their 
dogmas and religious sentiments embodied in a 
man, just as they do their romantic fancies. Of 
course you Protestants, with your married clergy, 
see less of the effects of this than celibates do, but 
even with you there is a great deal in it. Why, the 
326 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


very institution of celibacy itself was forced upon 
the early Christian Church by the scandal of rich 
Roman ladies loading bishops and handsome 
priests with fabulous gifts, until the passion for 
currying favor with women of wealth, and marry- 
ing them or wheedling their fortunes from them, 
debauched the whole priesthood. You should 
read your Jerome.” 

“ I will, — certainly,” said the listener, resolving 
to remember the name and refer it to the old 
bookseller. 

u Well, whatever laws one sect or another makes, 
the woman’s attitude toward the priest survives. 
She desires to see him surrounded by flower-pots 
and candles, to have him smelling of musk. She 
would like to curl his hair, and weave garlands in 
it. Although she is not learned enough to have 
ever heard of such things, she intuitively feels in his 
presence a sort of backwash of the old pagan sen- 
suality and lascivious mysticism which enveloped 
the priesthood in Greek and Roman days. Ugh ! 
It makes one sick ! ” 

Dr. Ledsmar rose, as he spoke, and dismissed 
the topic with a dry little laugh. “ Come, let me 
show you round a bit,” he said. “ My shoulder is 
easier walking than sitting.” 

" Have you never written a book yourself? ” 
asked Theron, getting to his feet. 

“ I have a thing on serpent-worship,” the scien- 
tist replied. — “ written years ago.” 

3 2 7 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“I can’t tell you how I should enjoy reading 
it,” urged the other. 

The doctor laughed again. “ You ’ll have to 
learn German, then, I ’m afraid. It is still in cir- 
culation in Germany, I believe, on its merits as a 
serious book. I have n’t a copy of the edition in 
English. That was all exhausted by collectors 
who bought it for its supposed obscenity, like 
Burton’s ‘ Arabian Nights.’ Come this way, and I 
will show you my laboratory.” 

They moved out of the room, and through a 
passage, Ledsmar talking as he led the way. “ I 
took up that subject, when I was at college, by a 
curious chance. I kept a young monkey in my 
rooms, which had been born in captivity. I 
brought home from a beer hall — it was in Ger- 
many — some pretzels one night, and tossed one 
toward the monkey. He jumped toward it, then 
screamed and ran back shuddering with fright. I 
could n’t understand it at first. Then I saw that 
the curled pretzel, lying there on the floor, was 
very like a little coiled-up snake. The monkey 
had never seen a snake, but it was in his blood 
to be afraid of one. That incident changed my 
whole life for me. Up to that evening, I had 
intended to be a lawyer.” 

Theron did not feel sure that he had understood 
the point of the anecdote. He looked now, with- 
out much interest, at some dark little tanks con- 
taining thick water, a row of small glass cases with 
328 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


adders and other lesser reptiles inside, and a gem 
eral collection of boxes, jars, and similar receptacles 
connected with the doctor’s pursuits. Further on 
was a smaller chamber, with a big empty furnace, 
and shelves bearing bottles and apparatus like a 
drug-store. 

It was pleasanter in the conservatory, — a low, 
spacious structure with broad pathways between the 
plants, and an awning over the sunny side of the 
roof. The plants were mostly orchids, he learned. 
He had read of them, but never seen any be- 
fore. No doubt they were cunous; but he dis- 
covered nothing to justify the great fuss made 
about them. The heat grew oppressive inside, and 
he was glad to emerge into the garden. He 
paused under the grateful shade of a vine-clad 
trellis, took off his hat, and looked about 
him with a sigh of relief. Everything seemed 
old-fashioned and natural and delightfully free 
from pretence in the big, overgrown field of flowers 
and shrubs. 

Theron recalled with some surprise Celia’s 
indictment of the doctor as a man with no poetry 
in his soul. “You must be extremely fond 
of flowers,” he remarked. 

Dr. Ledsmar shrugged his well shoulder. “ They 
have their points,” he said briefly. “ These are 
all dioecious here. Over beyond are monoecious 
species. My work is to test the probabilities for 
or against Darwin’s theory that hermaphroditism 

329 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


in plants is a late by-product of these earlier 
forms.” 

“And is his theory right?” asked Mr. Ware, 
with a polite show of interest. 

“We may know in the course of three or four 
hundred years,” replied Ledsmar. He looked up 
into his guest’s face with a quizzical half- smile. 
“ That is a very brief period for observation when 
such a complicated question as sex is involved,” he 
added. “We have been studying the female of 
our own species for some hundreds of thousands 
of years, and we have n’t arrived at the most 
elementary rules governing her actions.” 

They had moved along to a bed of tall plants, 
the more forward of which were beginning to show 
bloom. “ Here another task will begin next 
month,” the doctor observed. “These are salvias, 
pentstemons, and antirrhinums, or snapdragons, 
planted very thick for the purpose. Humble-bees 
bore holes through their base, to save the labor of 
climbing in and out of the flowers, and we don’t 
quite know yet why some hive-bees discover and 
utilize these holes at once, while others never do. 
It may be merely the old-fogy conservatism of 
the individual, or there may be a law in it.” 

These seemed very paltry things for a man of 
such wisdom to bother his head about. Theron 
looked, as he was bidden, at the rows of hives 
shining in the hot sun on a bench along the wall, 
but offered no comment beyond a casual, “ My 

33 ° 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


mother was always going to keep bees, but some- 
how she never got around to it. They say it pays 
very well, though.” 

“The discovery of the reason why no bee will 
touch the nectar of the Epipactis latifolia , though 
it is sweet to our taste, and wasps are greedy for it, 
would pay,” commented the doctor. “Not like a 
blue rhododendron, in mere money, but in recog- 
nition. Lots of men have achieved a half-column 
in the 1 Encyclopedia Britannica ’ on a smaller basis 
than that.” 

They stood now at the end of the garden, 
before a small, dilapidated summer-house. On the 
bench inside, facing him, Theron saw a strange 
recumbent figure stretched at full length, appar- 
ently sound asleep, or it might be dead. Looking 
closer, with a startled surprise, he made out the 
shaven skull and outlandish garb of a Chinaman. 
He turned toward his guide in the expectation of 
a scene. 

The doctor had already taken out a note-book 
and pencil, and was drawing his watch from 
his pocket. He stepped into the summer-house, 
and, lifting the Oriental’s limp arm, took account 
of his pulse. Then, with head bowed low, side- 
wise, he listened for the heart-action. Finally, 
he somewhat brusquely pushed back one of the 
Chinaman’s eyelids, and made a minute inspection 
of what the operation disclosed. Returning to the 
light, he inscribed some notes in his book, put it 
33 1 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


back in his pocket, and came out. In answer ta 
Theron’s marvelling stare, he pointed toward a 
pipe of odd construction lying on the floor beneath 
the sleeper. 

“This is one of my regular afternoon duties,” 
he explained, again with the whimsical half-smile* 
“ I am increasing his dose monthly by regular 
stages, and the results promise to be rather remark- 
able. Heretofore, observations have been made 
mostly on diseased or morbidly deteriorated sub- 
jects. This fellow of mine is strong as an ox, 
perfectly nourished, and watched over intelligently. 
He can assimilate opium enough to kill you and 
me and every other vertebrate creature on the 
premises, without turning 2 hair, and he has n’t 
got even fairly under way yet.” 

The thing was unpleasant, and the young min- 
ister turned away. They walked together up the 
path toward the house. His mind was full now of 
the hostile things which Celia had said about the 
doctor. He had vaguely sympathized with her 
then, upon no special knowledge of his own. Now 
he felt that his sentiments were vehemently in 
accord with hers. The doctor was a beast. 

And yet — as they moved slowly along through 
the garden the thought took sudden shape in his 
mind — it would be only justice for him to get also 
the doctor’s opinion of Celia. Even while they 
offended and repelled him, he could not close his 
eyes to the fact that the doctor’s experiments and 
332 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


occupations were those of a patient and exact man 
of science, — a philosopher. And what he had 
said about women, -- there was certainly a great 
deal of acumen and shrewd observation in that. 
If he would only say what he really thought about 
Celia, and about her relations with the priest ! 
Yes, Theron recognized now there was nothing 
else that he so much needed light upon as those 
puzzling ties between Celia and Father Forbes. 

He paused, with a simulated curiosity, about 
one of the flower-beds. “ Speaking of women 
and religion,” — he began, in as casual a tone as 
he could command, — “ I notice curiously enough 
in my own case, that as I develop in what you 
may call the — the other direction, my wife, who 
formerly was not especially devoted, is being 
strongly attracted by the most unthinking and 
hysterical side of — of our church system.” 

The doctor looked at him, nodded, and stooped 
to nip some buds from a stalk in the bed. 

“And another case,” Theron went on — “of 
course it was all so new and strange to me — but 
the position which Miss Madden seems to occupy 
about the Catholic Church here — I suppose you 
had her in mind when you spoke.” 

Ledsmar stood up. “My mind has better 
things to busy itself with than mad asses of that 
description,” he replied. “ She is not worth talk- 
ing about, — a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance, 
and red-headed lewdness. If she were even a 
- 333 


tHE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


type, she might be worth considering ; but she is 
simply an abnormal sport, with a little brain addled 
by notions that she is like Hypatia, and a large 
impudence rendered intolerable by the fact that 
she has money. Her father is a decent man. He 
ought to have her whipped.” 

Mr. Ware drew himself erect, as he listened to 
these outrageous words. It would be unmanly, he 
felt, to allow such comments upon an absent friend 
to pass unrebuked. Yet there was the courtesy 
due to a host to be considered. His mind, 
fluttering between these two extremes, alighted 
abruptly upon a compromise. He would speak so 
as to show his disapproval, yet not so as to prevent 
his finding out what he wanted to know. The 
desire to hear Ledsmar talk about Celia and the 
priest seemed now to have possessed him for a 
long time, to have dictated his unpremeditated 
visit out here, to have been growing in intensity 
all the while he pretended to be interested in 
orchids and bees and the drugged Chinaman. 
It tugged passionately at his self-control as he 
spoke. 

“ I cannot in the least assent to your characteri- 
zation of the lady,” he began with rhetorical 
dignity. 

“ Bless me ! ” interposed the doctor, with decep- 
tive cheerfulness, “ that is not required of you at all. 
It is a strictly personal opinion, offered merely as a 
contribution to the general sum of hypotheses.” 

>334 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WAR# 


“ But,” Theron went on, feeling his way, “ of 
course, I gathered that evening that you had 
prejudices in the matter; but these are rather 
apart from the point I had in view. We were 
speaking, you will remember, of the traditional 
attitude of women toward priests, — wanting to 
curl their hair and put flowers in it, you know, — 
and that suggested to me some individual illustra- 
tions, and it occurred to me to wonder just what 
were the relations between Miss Madden and — 
and Father Forbes. She said this murning, for 
instance, — I happened to meet her, quite by 
accident, — that she was going to the church to 
practise a new piece, and that she could have 
Father Forbes to herself all day. Now that would 
be quite an impossible remark in our — that is, 
in any Protestant circles — and purely as a matter 
of comparison, I was curious to ask you just how 
much there was in it. I ask you, because going 
there so much you have had exceptional oppor- 
tunities for — ” 

A sharp exclamation from his companion inter- 
rupted the clergyman’s hesitating monologue. It 
began like a high-pitched, violent word, but 
dwindled suddenly into a groan of pain. The 
doctor’s face, too, which had on the flash of 
Theron’s turning seemed given over to unmixed 
anger, took on an expression of bodily suffering 
instead. 

“ My shoulder has grown all at once excessively 

335 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

painful,” he said hastily. “ 1 ’m afraid I must ask 
you to excuse me, Mr. Ware.” 

Carrying the afflicted side with ostentatious 
caution, he led the way without ado round the 
house to the front gate on the road. He had put 
his left hand under his coat to press it against his 
aching shoulder, and his right hung palpably help- 
less. This rendered it impossible for him to shake 
hands with his guest in parting. 

“ You ’re sure there ’s nothing I can do;” said 
Theron, lingering on the outer side of the gate. 
“ I used to rub my father’s shoulders and back ; 
I’d gladly — ” 

“ Oh, not for worlds ! ” groaned the doctor. 
His anguish was so impressive that Theron, as he 
walked down the road, quite missed the fact that 
there had been no invitation to come again. 

Dr. Ledsmar stood for a minute or two, his 
gaze meditatively following the retreating figure. 
Then he went in, opening the front door with his 
right hand, and carrying himself once more as if 
there were no such thing as rheumatism in the 
world. He wandered on through the hall into 
the laboratory, and stopped in front of the row of 
little tanks full of water. 

Some deliberation was involved in whatever his 
purpose might be, for he looked from one tank to 
another with a pondering, dilatory gaze. At last 
he plunged his hand into the opaque fluid and 
drew forth a long, slim, yellowish-green lizard, with 

_ 336 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


a coiling, sinuous tail and a pointed, evil head. 
The leptile squirmed and doubled itself backward 
around his wrist, darting out and in with dizzy 
swiftness its tiny forked tongue. 

The doctor held the thing up to the light, and, 
scrutinizing it through his spectacles, nodded his 
head in sedate approval. A grim smile curled in 
his beard. 

“ Yes, you are the type,” he murmured to it, 
with evident enjoyment in the conceit. “ Your 
name isn’t Johnny any more. It’s the Rev. 
Theron Ware.” 


CHAPTER XXII 




The annual camp- meeting of the combined 
Methodist districts of Octavius and Thessaly was 
held this year in the second half of September, 
a little later than usual. Of the nine days devoted 
to this curious survival of primitive Wesleyanism, 
the fifth fell upon a Saturday. On the noon of 
that day the Rev. Theron Ware escaped for some 
hours from the burden of work and incessant 
observation which he shared with twenty other 
preachers, and walked alone in the woods. 

The scene upon which he turned his back was 
one worth looking at. A spacious, irregularly 
defined clearing in the forest lay level as a tennis- 
court, under the soft haze of autumn sunlight. In 
the centre was a large, roughly constructed frame 
building, untouched by paint, but stained and 
weather-beaten with time. Behind it were some 
lines of horse-sheds, and still further on in that 
direction, where the trees began, the eye caught 
fragmentary glimpses of low roofs and the fronts of 
tiny cottages, withdrawn from full view among the 
saplings and underbrush. At the other side of the 
clearing, fully fourscore tents were pitched, some 
33 * , 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


gray and mended, others dazzlingly white in their 
newness. The more remote of these tents fell 
into an orderly arrangement of semi-circular form, 
facing that part of the engirdling woods where the 
trees were largest, and their canopy of overhanging 
foliage was lifted highest from the ground. Inside 
this half-ring of tents were many rounded rows of 
benches, which followed in narrowing lines the 
idea of an amphitheatre cut in two. In the centre, 
just under the edge of the roof of boughs, rose a 
wooden pagoda, in form not unlike an open-air 
stand for musicians. In front of this, and leading 
from it on the level of its floor, there projected a 
platform, railed round with aggressively rustic 
woodwork. The nearest benches came close 
about this platform. 

At the hour when Theron started away, there 
were few enough signs of life about this encamp- 
ment. The four or five hundred people who were 
in constant residence were eating their dinners 
in the big boarding-house, or the cottages or the 
tents. It was not the time of day for strangers. 
Even when services were in progress by daylight, 
the regular attendants did not make much of a 
show, huddled in a gray-black mass at the front 
of the auditorium, by comparison with the great 
green and blue expanses of nature about them. 

The real spectacle was in the evening, when, 
as the shadows gathered, big clusters of kerosene 
torches, hung high on the trees facing the audience, 
339 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


were lighted. The falling darkness magnified the 
glow of the lights, and the size and importance of 
what they illumined. The preacher, bending for- 
ward over the rails of the platform, and fastening 
his eyes upon the abashed faces of those on the 
“ anxious seat ” beneath him, borrowed an effect 
of druidical mystery from the wall of blackness 
about him, from the flickering reflections on the 
branches far above, from the cool night air which 
stirred across the clearing. The change was in 
the blood of those who saw and heard him, too. 
The decorum and half-heartedness of their devo- 
tions by day deepened under the glare of the 
torches into a fervent enthusiasm, even before 
the services began. And if there was in the rustic 
pulpit a man whose prayers or exhortations could 
stir their pulses, they sang and groaned and 
bellowed out their praises with an almost barbar- 
ous license, such as befitted the wilderness. 

But in the evening not all were worshippers. 
For a dozen miles round on the country-side, 
young farm- workers and their girls regarded the 
camp-meeting as perhaps the chief event of the 
year, — no more to be missed than the country 
fair or the circus, and offering, from many points 
of view, more opportunities for genuine enjoyment 
than either. Their behavior when they came was 
pretty bad, — not the less so because all the rules 
established by the Presiding Elders for the regu- 
lation of strangers took it for granted that they 
. 340 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


would act as viciously as they knew how. These 
sight-seers sometimes ventured to occupy the back 
benches, where the light was dim. More often 
they stood outside, in the circular space between 
the tents and the benches, and mingled cat-calls, 
drovers’ yelps, and all sorts of mocking cries and 
noises with the “ Amens ' of the earnest congre- 
gation. Their rough horse-play on the fringe of the 
sanctified gathering was grievous enough ; every- 
body knew that much worse things went on 
further out in the surrounding darkness. Indeed, 
popular report gave to these external phases of the 
camp -meeting an even more evil fame than attached 
to the later moonlight husking-bees, or the least 
reputable of the midwinter dances at Dave Ran- 
dall’s low halfway house. 

Cynics said that the Methodists found conso- 
lation for this scandal in the large income they de- 
rived from their unruly visitors’ gate-money. This 
was unfair. No doubt the money played its part, 
but there was something else far more important. 
The pious dwellers in the camp, intent upon reviv- 
ing in their poor modern way the character and 
environment of the heroic early days, felt the need 
of just this hostile and scoffing mob about them to 
bring out the spirit they sought. Theirs was pre- 
eminently a fighting religion, which languished in 
peaceful fair weather, but flamed high in the 
storm. The throng of loafers and light-minded 
worldlings of both sexes, with their jeering inter- 
34 * 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ruptions and lewd levity of conduct, brought upon 
the scene a kind of visible personal devil, with 
whom the chosen could do battle face to face. 
The daylight services became more and more per- 
functory, as the sojourn in the woods ran its course, 
and interest concentrated itself upon the night 
meetings, for the reason that then came the fierce 
wrestle with a Beelzebub of flesh and blood. And 
it was not so one-sided a contest, either ! 

No evening passed without its victories for the 
pulpit. Careless or mischievous young people 
who were pushed into the foremost ranks of the 
mockers, and stood grinning and grimacing under 
the lights, would of a sudden feel a spell clamped 
upon them. They would hear a strange, quaver- 
ing note in the preacher’s voice, catch the sense of 
a piercing, soul-commanding gleam in his eye, — 
not at all to be resisted. These occult forces 
would take control of them, drag them forward as 
in a dream to the benches under the pulpit, and 
abase them there like worms in the dust. And 
then the preacher would descend, and the elders 
advance, and the torch-fires would sway and dip 
before the wind of the mighty roar chat went up in 
triumph from the brethren. 

These combats with Satan at close quarters, if 
they made the week-day evenings exciting, reacted 
tfith an effect of crushing dulness upon the Sun- 
day services. The rule was to admit no strangers 
to the grounds from Saturday night to Monday 
... 342 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


morning. Every year attempts were made to 
•escind or modify this rule, and this season at 
.east three- fourths of the laymen in attendance 
had signed a petition in favor of opening the gates. 
The two Presiding Elders, supported by a dozen 
of the older preachers, resisted the change, and 
they had the backing of the more bigoted section 
:>f the congregation from Octavius. The con- 
troversy reached a point where Theron’s Presiding 
Elder threatened to quit the grounds, and the 
leaders of the open- Sunday movement spoke 
freely of the ridiculous figure which its cranks and 
fanatics made poor Methodism cut in the eyes of 
modern go-ahead American civilization. Then 
Theron Ware saw his opportunity, and preached 
an impromptu sermon upon the sanctity of the 
Sabbath, which ended all discussion. Sometimes 
its arguments seemed to be on one side, some- 
times on the other, but always they were clothed 
with so serene a beauty of imagery, and moved in 
such a lofty and rarefied atmosphere of spiritual 
exaltation, that it was impossible to link them to so 
sordid a thing as this question of gate-money. 
When he had finished, nobody wanted the gates 
opened. The two factions found that the differ- 
ence between them had melted out of existence. 
They sat entranced by the charm of the sermon ; 
then, glancing around at the empty ocnches, 
glaringly numerous in the afternoon sunlight, they 
whispered regrets that ten thousand people had 
343 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


not been there to hear that marvellous discourse. 
Theron’s conquest was of exceptional dimensions. 
The majority, whose project he had defeated, were 
strangers who appreciated and admired his effort 
most. The little minority of his own flock, though 
less susceptible to the influence of graceful diction 
and delicately balanced rhetoric, were proud of the 
distinction he had reflected upon them, and de- 
lighted with him for having won their fight. The 
Presiding Elders wrung his hand with a significant 
grip. The extremists of his own charge beamed 
friendship upon him for the first time. He was 
the veritable hero of the week. 

The prestige of this achievement made it the 
easier for Theron to get away by himself next day, 
and walk in the woods. A man of such power had 
a right to solitude. Those who noted his de- 
parture from the camp remembered with pleasure 
that he was to preach again on the morrow. He 
was going to commune with God in the depths of 
the forest, that the Message next day might be 
clearer and more luminous still. 

Theron strolled for a little, with an air of aim- 
lessness, until he was well outside the more or less 
frequented neighborhood of the camp. Then he 
looked at the sun and the lay of the land with that 
informing scrutiny of which the farm-bred boy 
never loses the trick, turned, and strode at a rat- 
tling pace down the hillside. He knew nothing 
personally of this piece of woodland, — a spur of 
344 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the great Adirondack wilderness thrust southward 
into the region of homesteads and dairies and hop- 
fields, — but he had prepared himself by a study of 
the map, and he knew where he wanted to go. 
Very soon he hit upon the path he had counted 
upon finding, and at this he quickened his gait. 

Three months of the new life had wrought 
changes in Theron. He bore himself more erectly, 
for one thing ; his shoulders were thrown back, 
and seemed thicker. The alteration was even 
more obvious in his face. The effect of lank, 
wistful, sallow juvenility had vanished. It was the 
countenance of a mature, well-fed, and confident 
man, firmer and more rounded in its outlines, and 
with a glow of health on its whole surface. Under 
the chin were the suggestions of fulness which be* 
speak an easy mind. His clothes were new ; the 
frock-coat fitted him, and the thin, dark-colored 
autumn overcoat, with its silk lining exposed at the 
breast, gave a masculine bulk and shape to his 
figure. He wore a shining tall hat, and, in haste 
though he was, took pains not to knock it against 
low-hanging branches. 

All had gone well — more than well — with him. 
The second Quarterly Conference had passed with- 
out a ripple. Both the attendance and the collec- 
tions at his church were larger than ever before, 
and the tone of the congregation toward him was 
altered distinctly for the better. As for himself, he 
viewed with astonished delight the progress he had 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


made in his own estimation. He had taken Sister 
Soulsby’s advice, and the results were already won- 
derful. He had put aside, once and for all, the 
thousand foolish trifles and childish perplexities 
which formerly had racked his brain, and worried 
him out of sleep and strength. He borrowed all 
sorts of books boldly now from the Octavius public 
library, and could swim with a calm mastery and 
enjoyment upon the deep waters into which Draper 
and Lecky and Laing and the rest had hurled him. 
He dallied pleasurably, a little languorously, with a 
dozen aspects of the case against revealed religion, 
ranging from the mild heterodoxy of Andover’s 
qualms to the rude IngersolFs rollicking negation of 
God himself, as a woman of coquetry might play 
with as many would-be lovers. They amused him ; 
they were all before him to choose ; and he was 
free to postpone indefinitely the act of selection. 
There was a sense of the luxurious in this position 
which softened bodily as well as mental fibres. 
He ceased to grow indignant at things below or 
outside his standards, and he bought a small book 
which treated of the care of the hand and finger- 
nails. 

Alice had accepted with deference his explana- 
tion that shapely hands played so important a 
part in pulpit oratory. For that matter, she now 
accepted whatever he said or did with admirable 
docility. It was months since he could remember 
ker venturing upon a critical attitude toward him. 

34-6 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


She had not wished to leave home, for the seaside 
or any other resort, during the summer, but had 
worked outside in her garden more than usual. 
This was inexpensive, and it seemed to do her as 
much good as a holiday could have done. Her 
new devotional zeal was now quite an old thing ; 
it had not slackened at all from the revival pitch. 
At the outset she had tried several times to talk 
with her husband upon this subject. He had 
discouraged conversation about her soul and its 
welfare, at first obliquely, then, under compulsion, 
with some directness. His thoughts were ab- 
sorbed, he said, by the contemplation of vast, 
abstract schemes of creation and the government 
of the universe, and it only diverted and embar- 
rassed his mind to try to fasten it upon the details 
of personal salvation. Thereafter the topic was 
not broached between them. 

She bestowed a good deal of attention, too, 
upon her piano. The knack of a girlish nimble- 
ness of touch had returned to her after a few 
weeks, and she made music which Theron sup- 
posed was very good, — for her. It pleased him, 
at all events, when he sat and listened to it ; but 
he had a far greater pleasure, as he listened, in 
dwelling upon the memories of the yellow and blue 
room which the sounds always brought up. Al- 
though three months had passed, Thurston’s had 
never asked for the first payment on the piano, or 
even sent in a bill. This impressed him as being 
- 347 - 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

peculiarly graceful behavior on his part, and he 
recognized its delicacy by not going near Thurs- 
ton’s at all. 

An hour’s sharp walk, occasionally broken by 
short cuts across open pastures, but for the most 
part on forest paths, brought Theron to the brow 
of a small knoll, free from underbrush, and covered 
sparsely with beech-trees. The ground was soft 
with moss and the powdered remains of last year’s 
foliage ; the leaves above him were showing the 
first yellow stains of autumn. A sweet smell of 
ripening nuts was thick upon the air, and busy 
rustlings and chirpings through the stillness told 
how the chipmunks and squirrels were attending 
to their harvest. 

Theron had no ears for these noises of the 
woodland. He had halted, and was searching 
through the little vistas offered between the stout 
gray trunks of the beeches for some sign of a more 
sophisticated sort. Yes ! there were certainly 
voices to be heard, down in the hollow. And 
now, beyond all possibility of mistake, there came 
up to him the low, rhythmic throb of music. 
It was the merest faint murmur of music, made up 
almost wholly of groaning bass notes, but it was 
enough. He moved down the slope, swiftly at 
first, then with increasing caution. The sounds 
grew louder as he advanced, until he could hear 
the harmony of the other strings in its place 
beside the uproar of the big fiddles, and distin* 
348 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


guish from both the measured noise of many feet 
moving rs one. 

He reached a place from which, himself unob- 
served, he could overlook much of what he had 
come to see. 

The bottom of the glade below him lay out in 
the full sunshine, as flat and as velvety in its fresh 
greenness as a garden lawn. Its open expanse 
was big enough to accommodate several distinct 
crowds, and here the crowds were, — one massed 
about an enclosure in which young men were play- 
ing at football, another gathered further off in a 
horse-shoe curve at the end of a baseball diamond, 
and a third thronging at a point where the shade 
of overhanging woods began, focussed upon a cen- 
tre of interest which Theron could not make out. 
Closer at hand, where a shallow stream rippled 
along over its black-slate bed, some little boys, 
with legs bared to the thighs, were paddling about, 
under the charge of two men clad in long black 
gowns. There were others of these frocked moni- 
tors scattered here and there upon the scene, — 
pallid, close-shaven, monkish figures, who none 
the less wore modern hats, and superintended with 
knowledge the games of the period. Theron re- 
membered that these were the Christian Brothers, 
the semi-monastic teachers of the Catholic school. 

And this was the picnic of the Catholics of 
Octavius. He gazed in mingled amazement and 
exhilaration upon the spectacle. There seemed to 
- 349 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


be literally thousands of people on the open fields 
before him, and apparently there were still other 
thousands in the fringes of the woods round about. 
The noises which arose from this multitude — the 
shouts of the lads in the water, the playful squeals 
of the girls in the swings, the fused uproar of the 
more distant crowds, and above all the diligent, 
ordered strains of the dance-music proceeding 
from some invisible distance in the greenwood — * 
charmed his ears with their suggestion of universal 
merriment. He drew a long breath — half pleas- 
ure, half wistful regret — as he remembered that 
other gathering in the forest which he had left 
behind. 

At any rate, it should be well behind him to-day, 
whatever the morrow might bring ! Evidently he 
was on the wrong side of the circle for the head- 
quarters of the festivities. He turned and walked 
to the right through the beeches, making a detour, 
under cover, of the crowds at play. At last he 
rounded the long oval of the clearing, and found 
himself at the very edge of that largest throng of 
all, which had been too far away for comprehen- 
sion at the beginning. There was no mystery 
now. A rough, narrow shed, fully fifty feet in 
length, imposed itself in an arbitrary line across 
the face of this crowd, dividing it into two com- 
pact halves. Inside this shed, protected all round 
by a waist-high barrier of boards, on top of which 
ran a flat, table -like covering, were twenty men in 
359 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

their shirt-sleeves, toiling ceaselessly to keep abreat v 
of the crowd’s thirst for beer. The actions ot 
these bar- tenders greatly impressed Theron. They 
moved like so many machines, using one hand, 
apparently, to take money and give change, and 
with the other incessantly sweeping off rows of 
empty glasses, and tossing forward in their place 
fresh, foaming glasses five at a time. Hundreds 
of arms and hands were continually stretched out, 
on both sides of the shed, toward this streaming 
bar. and through the babel of eager cries rose 
without pause the racket of mallets tapping new 
kegs. 

Theron had never seen any considerable number 
of his fellow-citizens engaged in drinking lager 
beer before. His surprise at the facility of those 
behind the bar began to yield, upon observation, 
to a profound amazement at the thirst of those 
before it. The same people seemed to be always 
in front, emptying the glasses faster than the busy 
men inside could replenish them, and clamoring 
tirelessly for more. New-comers had to force their 
way to the bar by violent efforts, and once there 
they stayed until pushed bodily aside. There 
were actually women to be seen here and there in 
the throng, elbowing and shoving like the rest for 
a place at the front. Some of the more gallant 
young men fought their way outward, from time to 
time, carrying for safety above their heads glasses 
of beer which they gave to young and pretty girls, 
35 1 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


standing on the fringe of the crowd, among the 
trees. 

Everywhere a remarkable good-humor prevailed. 
Once a sharp fight broke out, just at the end of 
the bar nearest Theron, and one young man was 
knocked down. A rush of the onlookers confused 
everything before the minister’s eyes for a minute, 
and then he saw the aggrieved combatant up on 
his legs again, consenting under the kindly pres- 
sure of the crowd to shake hands with his antag- 
onist, and join him in more beer. The incident 
caught his fancy. There was something very 
pleasingly human, he thought, in this primitive 
readiness to resort to fisticuffs, and this frank 
and genial reconciliation. 

Perhaps there was something contagious in this 
wholesale display of thirst, for the Rev. Mr. Ware 
became conscious of a notion that he should like 
to try a glass of beer. He recalled having heard 
that lager was really a most harmless beverage. 
Of course it was out of the question that he should 
show himself at the bar. Perhaps some one would 
bring him out a glass, as if he were a pretty girl. 
He looked about for a possible messenger. Turn- 
ing, he found himself face to face with two smiling 
people, into whose eyes he stared for an instant in 
dumfounded blankness. Then his countenance 
flashed with joy, and he held out both hands in 
greeting. It was Father Forbes and Celia. 

u We stole down upon you unawares,” said the 
352 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


priest, in his cheeriest manner. He wore a brown 
straw hat, and loose clothes hardly at all clerical 
in form, and had Miss Madden’s arm drawn 
lightly within his own. “ We could barely believe 
our eyes, — that it could be you whom we saw, 
here among the sinners ! ” 

“ I am in love with your sinners,” responded 
Theron, as he shook hands with Celia, and trusted 
himself to look fully into her eyes. “ I ’ve had 
five days of the saints, over in another part of the 
woods, and they ’ve bored the head off me.” 


*3 


353 


CHAPTER XXIII 


At the command of Father Forbes, a lad who 
was loitering near them went down through the 
throng to the bar, and returned with three glasses 
of beer. It pleased the Rev. Mr. Ware that the 
priest should have taken it for granted that he 
would do as the others did. He knocked his glass 
against theirs in compliance with a custom strange 
to him, but which they seemed to understand very 
well. The beer itself was not so agreeable to the 
taste as he had expected, but it was cold and 
refreshing. 

When the boy had returned with the glasses, 
the three stood for a moment in silence, medi- 
tatively watching the curious scene spread below 
them. Beyond the bar, Theron could catch now 
through the trees regularly recurring glimpses of 
four or five swings in motion. These were 
nearest him, and clearest to the vision as well, at 
the instant when they reached their highest for- 
ward point. The seats were filled with girls, 
tome of them quite grown young women, and 
their curving upward sweep through the air was 
disclosing at its climax a remarkable profusion of 
white skirts and black stockings. The sight 
w4 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


struck him as indecorous in the extreme, and he 
turned his eyes away. They met Celia’s; and 
there was something latent in their brown depths 
which prompted him, after a brief dalliance of 
interchanging glances, to look again at the swings. 

“ That old maid Curran is really too ridiculous, 
with those white stockings of hers,” remarked 
Celia ; “ some friend ought to tell her to dye 
them.” 

“ Or pad them,” suggested Father Forbes, with 
a gay little chuckle. “ I daresay the question of 
swings and ladies’ stockings hardly arises with you, 
over at the camp-meeting, Mr. Ware ? ” 

Theron laughed aloud at the conceit. “ I 
should say not ! ” he replied. 

“ I ’m just dying to see a camp-meeting ! ” said 
Celia. “ You hear such racy accounts of what 
goes on at them.” 

“ Don’t go, I beg of you ! ” urged Theron, with 
doleful emphasis. “ Don’t let ’s even talk about 
them. I should like to feel this afternoon as if 
there was no such thing within a thousand miles 
of me as a camp-meeting. Do you know, all this 
interests me enormously. It is a revelation to me 
to see these thousands of good, decent, ordinary 
people, just frankly enjoying themselves like human 
beings. I suppose that in this whole huge crowd 
there is n’t a single person who will mention the 
subject of his soul to any other person all day 
long.” 


355 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ I should think the assumption was a safe one/* 
said the priest, smilingly, “ unless,” he added 
on after- thought, “ it be by way of a genial 
profanity. There used to be some old Clare men 
who said * Hell to my soul ! * when they missed at 
quoits, but I have n’t heard it for a long time. I 
daresay they ’re all dead.” 

“ I shall never forget that death-bed — where 
I sa»v you first,” remarked Theron, musingly. “ I 
date from that experience a whole new life. I 
have been greatly struck lately, in reading our 
* Northern Christian Advocate * to see in the 
obituary notices of prominent Methodists how over 
and over again it is recorded that they get religion 
in their youth through being frightened by some 
illness of their own, or some epidemic about them. 
The cholera year of 1832 seems to have made 
Methodists hand over fist. Even to this day our 
most successful revivalists, those who work conver- 
sions wholesale wherever they go, do it more by 
frightful pictures of hell-fire surrounding the sin- 
ner’s death-bed than anything else. You could 
hear the same thing at our camp-meeting to-night f 
if you were there.” 

“ There is n’t so much difference as you think,” 
said Father Forbes, dispassionately. “ Your peo- 
ple keep examining their souls, just as children 
keep pulling up the bulbs they have planted to see 
are there any roots yet. Our people are more 
satisfied to leave their souls alone, once they have 

i$6 


■rriE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


been planted, so to speak, by baptism. But fear 
of hell governs them both, pretty much alike. As 
I remember saying to you once before, there is 
really nothing new under the sun. Even the say- 
ing is n’t new. Though there seem to have been 
the most tremendous changes in races and civili- 
zations and religions, stretching over many thou- 
sands of years, yet nothing is in fact altered very 
much. Where religions are concerned, the human 
race are still very like savages in a dangerous 
wood in the dark, telling one another ghost stories 
around a camp-fire. They have always been like 
that.” 

“ What nonsense ! ” cried Celia. “ I have no 
patience with such gloomy rubbish. The Greeks 
had a religion full of beauty and happiness and 
light-heartedness, and they were n’t frightened of 
death at all. They made the image of death a 
beautiful boy, with a torch turned down. Their 
greatest philosophers openly preached and prac- 
tised the doctrine of suicide when one was tired 
of life. Our own early Church was full of these 
broad and beautiful Greek ideas. You know that 
yourself! And it was only when your miserable 
Jeromes and Augustines and Cyrils brought in the 
abominable meannesses and cruelties of the Jewish 
Old Testament, and stamped out the sane and 
lovely Greek elements in the Church, that Chris- 
tians became the poor, whining, cowardly egotists 
they are, troubling about their little tin-pot souls, 
357 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

and scaring themselves in their churches by skulls 
and crossbones.” 

“ My dear Celia,” interposed the priest, patting 
her shoulder gently, “ we will have no Greek 
debate to-day. Mr. Ware has been permitted to 
taboo camp- meetings, and I claim the privilege to 
cry off on Greeks. Look at those fellows down 
there, trampling over one another to get more 
beer. What have they to do with Athens, or 
Athens with them? I take it, Mr. Ware,” he 
went on, with a grave face but a twinkling eye, 
“ that what we are observing here in front of us is 
symbolical of a great ethical and theological revo- 
lution, which in time will modify and control the 
destiny of the entire American people. You see 
those young Irishmen there, struggling like pigs at 
a trough to get their fill of German beer. That 
signifies a conquest of Teuton over Kelt more 
important and far-reaching in its results than the 
landing of Hengist and Horsa. The Kelt has 
come to grief heretofore — or at least been forced 
to play second fiddle to other races — because he 
lacked the right sort of a drink. He has in his 
blood an excess of impulsive, imaginative, even 
fantastic qualities. It is much easier for him to 
make a fool of himself, to begin with, than it is for 
people of slower wits and more sluggish tempera- 
ments. When you add whiskey to that, or that 
essence of melancholia which in Ireland they call 
‘porther/ you get the Kelt at his very weakest 
- 3S3 


-rri'E DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and worst. These young men down there are 
changing all that. They have discovered lager. 
Already many of them can outdrink the Germans 
at their own beverage. The lager-drinking Irish- 
man in a few generations will be a new type of 
humanity, — the Kelt at his best. He will domi- 
nate America. He will be the American. And 
his church — with the Italian element thrown 
clean out of it, and its Pope living, say, in Balti- 
more or Georgetown — will be the Church of 
America.” 

“ Let us have some more lager at once,” put in 
Celia. “ This revolution can’t be hurried forward 
too rapidly.” 

Theron could not feel sure how much of the 
priest’s discourse was in jest, how much in earnest. 
“ It seems to me,” he said, “ that as things are 
going, it does n’t look much as if the America of 
the future will trouble itself about any kind of a 
church. The march of science must very soon 
produce a universal scepticism. It is in the 
nature of human progress. What all intelligent 
men recognize to-day, the masses must surely 
come to see in time.” 

Father Forbes laughed outright this time. “ My 
dear Mr. Ware,” he said, as they touched glasses 
again, and sipped the fresh beer that had been 
brought them, “ of all our fictions there is none 
so utterly baseless and empty as this idea that 
humanity progresses. The savage’s natural im* 
359 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


pression is that the world he sees about him was 
made for him, and that the rest of the universe is 
subordinated to him and his world, and that all 
the spirits and demons and gods occupy them- 
selves exclusively with him and his affairs. That 
idea was the basis of every pagan religion, and it 
is the basis of the Christian religion, simply be- 
cause it is the foundation of human nature. That 
foundation is just as firm and unshaken to-day as it 
was in the Stone Age. It will always remain, and 
upon it will always be built some kind of a reli- 
gious superstructure. ‘ Intelligent men,’ as you call 
them, really have very little influence, even when 
they all pull one way. The people as a whole 
soon get tired of them. They give too much 
trouble. The most powerful forces in human 
nature are self-protection and inertia. The mid- 
dle-aged man has found out that the chief wisdom 
in life is to bend to the pressures about him, to 
shut up and do as others do. Even when he 
thinks he has rid his own mind of superstitions, 
he sees that he will best enjoy a peaceful life by 
leaving other peoples’ superstitions alone. That 
is always the ultimate view of the crowd.” 

“ But I don’t see,” observed Theron, “ granting 
that all this is true, how you think the Catholic 
Church will come out on top. I could under- 
stand it of Unitarianism, or Universalism, or the 
Episcopal Church, where nobody seems to have to 
believe particularly in anything except the beauty 
360 


■THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


of its burial service, but I should think the very 
rigidity of the Catholic creed would make it im- 
possible. There everything is hard and fast; 
nothing is elastic ; there is no room for compro- 
mise.” 

“ The Church is always compromising,” ex- 
plained the priest, “ only it does it so slowly that no 
one man lives long enough to quite catch it at the 
trick. No ; the great secret of the Catholic Church 
is that it does n’t debate with sceptics. No matter 
what points you make against it, it is never be- 
trayed into answering back. It simply says these 
things are sacred mysteries, which you are quite 
free to accept and be saved, or reject and be 
damned. There is something intelligible and fine 
about an attitude like that. When people have 
grown tired of their absurd and fruitless wrangling 
over texts and creeds which, humanly speaking, 
are all barbaric nonsense, they will come back to 
repose pleasantly under the Catholic roof, in that 
restful house where things are taken for granted. 
There the manners are charming, the service 
excellent, the decoration and upholstery most 
acceptable to the eye, and the music ” — he made 
a little mock bow here to Celia — “ the music at 
least is divine. There you have nothing to do 
but be agreeable, and avoid scandal, and observe 
the convenances. You are no more expected to 
express doubts about the Immaculate Conception 
than you are to ask the lady whom you take down 
36/ _ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

to dinner how old she is. Now that is, as I have 
said, an intelligent and rational church for people 
to have. As the Irish civilize themselves, — you 
observe them diligently engaged in the process 
down below there, — and the social roughness of 
their church becomes softened and ameliorated, 
Americans will inevitably be attracted toward it. 
In the end, it will embrace them all, and be 
modified by them, and in turn influence their 
development, till you will have a new nation 
and a new national church, each representative 
of the other.” 

“ And all this is to be done by lager beer ! ” 
Theron ventured to comment, jokingly. He was 
conscious of a novel perspiration around the bridge 
of his nose, which was obviously another effect of 
the drink. 

The priest passed the pleasantry by. “No,” 
he said seriously ; “ what you must see is that 
there must always be a church. If one did not 
exist, it would be necessary to invent it. It is 
needed, first and foremost, as a police force. It 
is needed, secondly, so to speak, as a fire insur- 
ance. It provides the most even temperature and 
pure atmosphere for the growth of young children. 
It furnishes the best obtainable social machinery 
for marrying off one’s daughters, getting to know 
the right people, patching up quarrels, and so on. 
The priesthood earn their salaries as the agents 
for these valuable social arrangements. Their 
362 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


theology is thrown in as a sort of intellectual 
diversion, like the ritual of a benevolent organiza- 
tion. There are some who get excited about this 
part of it, just as one hears of Free-Masons who 
believe that the sun rises and sets to exemplify 
their ceremonies. Others take their duties more 
quietly, and, understanding just what it all amounts 
to, make the best of it, like you and me.” 

Theron assented to the philosophy and the 
compliment by a grave bow. “Yes, that is the 
idea, — to make the best of it,” he said, and 
fastened his regard boldly this time upon the 
swings. 

“We were both ordained by our bishops,” 
continued the priest, “ at an age when those 
worthy old gentlemen would not have trusted our 
combined wisdom to buy a horse for them.” 

“ And I was married,” broke in Theron, with 
an eagerness almost vehement, “ when I had only 
just been ordained ! At the worst, you had only 
the Church fastened upon your back, before you 
were old enough to know what you wanted. It is 
easy enough to make the best of that ; but it is 
different with me.” 

A marked silence followed this outburst. The 
Rev. Mr. Ware had never spoken of his marriage 
to either of these friends before ; and something 
in their manner seemed to suggest that they did 
not find the subject inviting, now that it had been 
broached. He himself was filled with a desire to 
363 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


bay more about it. He had never clearly rezJized 
before what a genuine grievance it was. The 
moisture at the top of his nose merged itself into 
tears in the corners of his eyes, as the cruel enor- 
mity of the sacrifice he had made in his youth rose 
before him. His whole life had been fettered and 
darkened by it. He turned his gaze from the 
swings toward Celia, to claim the sympathy he 
knew she would feel for him. 

But Celia was otherwise engaged. A young 
man had come up to her, — a tall and extremely 
thin young man, soberly dressed, and with a long, 
gaunt, hollow-eyed face, the skin of which seemed 
at once florid and pale. He had sandy hair and 
the rough hands of a workman ; but he was speak- 
ing to Miss Madden in the confidential tones of 
an equal. 

“ I can do nothing at all with him,*’ this new- 
comer said to her. “ He ’ll not be said by me. 
Perhaps he ’d listen to you ! ” 

“ It ’s likely I ’ll go down there ! ” said Celia. 
“ He may do what he likes for all me ! Take 
my advice, Michael, and just go your way, and 
leave him to himself. There was a time when I 
would have taken out my eyes for him, but it was 
love wasted and thrown away. After the warnings 
he ’s had, if he will bring trouble on himself, let 
us make it no affair of ours.” 

Theron had found himself exchanging glances 
of inquiry with this young man. "Mr. Ware,” 
364 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

said Celia, here, “let me introduce you to my 
brother Michael, — my full brother.” 

Mr. Ware remembered him now, and began, 
in response to the other’s formal bow, to say some- 
thing about their having met in the dark, inside 
the church. But Celia held up her hand. “ I ’m 
afraid, Mr. Ware,” she said hurriedly, “ that you 
are in for a glimpse of the family skeleton. I will 
apologize for the infliction in advance.” 

Wonderingly, Theron followed her look, and saw 
another young man who had come up the path 
from the crowd below, and was close upon them. 
The minister recognized in him a figure which had 
seemed to be the centre of almost every group 
about the bar that he had studied in detail. He 
was a small, dapper, elegantly attired youth, with 
dark hair, and the handsome, regularly carved face 
of an actor. He advanced with a smiling counte- 
nance and unsteady step, — his silk hat thrust back 
upon his head, his frock-coat and vest unbuttoned, 
and his neckwear disarranged, — and saluted the 
company with amiability. 

“ I saw you up here, Father Forbes,” he said, 
with a thickened and erratic utterance. “ Why n’t 
you come down and join us? I’m setting ’em up 
for everybody. You got to take care of the boys, 
you know. I ’ll blow in the last cent I ’ve got in 
the world for the boys, every time, and they know 
it. They ’re solider for me than they ever were 
for anybody. That ’s how it is. If you stand by 
3^5 


fHE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


the boys, the boys *11 stand by you. I ’m going 
to the Assembly for this district, and they ain’t 
nobody can stop me. The boys are just red hot 
for me. Wish you 'd come down, Father Forbes, 
and address a few words to the meeting, — just 
mention that I ’m a candidate, and say I 'm bound 
to win, hands down. That ’ll make you solid with 
the boys, and we ’ll be all good fellows together. 
Come on down ! ” 

The priest affably disengaged his arm from the 
clutch which the speaker had laid upon it, and 
shook his head in gentle deprecation. “ No, no ; 
you must excuse me, Theodore,” he said. “ We 
mustn’t meddle in politics, you know.” 

“ Politics be damned ! ” urged Theodore, grab- 
bing the priest’s other arm, and tugging at it 
stoutly to pull him down the path. “I say, 
boys ! ” he shouted to those below, “here ’s Father 
Forbes, and he ’s going to come down and address 
the meeting. Come on, Father ! Come down, 
and have a drink with the boys ! ” 

It was Celia who sharply pulled his hand away 
from the priest's arm this time. “Go away with 
you ! ” she snapped in low, angry tones at the 
intruder. “You should be ashamed of yourself! 
If you can’t keep sober yourself, you can at least 
fceep your hands off the priest. I should think 
you ’d have more decency, when you ’re in such ; 
state as this, than to come where I am. If you 've 
no respect for yourself, you might have that muca 
iespect for me 1 And before strangers, too 1 •• 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“Oh, I mustn’t come where you are, eh?” 
remarked the peccant Theodore, straightening 
himself with an elaborate effort. “ You ’ve bought 
these woods, have you ? I ’ve got a hundred 
friends here, all the same, for every one you ’ll 
ever have in your life, Red-head, and don’t you 
forget it.” 

“ Go and spend your money with them, then, and 
don’t come insulting decent people,” said Celia. 

“ Before strangers, too 1 ” the young man called 
out, with beery sarcasm. “ Oh, we ’ll take care of 
the strangers all right.” He had not seemed to 
be aware of Theron’s presence, much less his 
identity, before ; but he turned to him now with a 
knowing grin. " I ’m running for the Assembly, 
Mr. Ware,” he said, speaking loudly and with 
deliberate effort to avoid the drunken elisions and 
comminglings to which his speech tended, “ and I 
want you to fix up the Methodists solid for me. 
I ’m going to drive over to the camp-meeting 
to-night, me and some of the boys in a barouche, 
and I ’ll put a twenty-dollar bill on their plate. 
Here it is now, if you want to see it.” 

As the young man began fumbling in a 
vest-pocket, Theron gathered his wits together. 
“ You ’d better not go this evening,” he said, as 
convincingly as he knew how ; “ because the gates 
will be closed very early, and the Saturday- evening 
services are of a particularly special nature, quite 
reserved for those living on the grounds.” 
v. 3 6 7 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

* Rats ! ” said Theodore, raising his head, and 
abandoning the search for the bill. “ Why don’t 
you speak out like a man, and say you think I 'm 
too drunk ? ' 

“ I don’t think that is a question which need 
arise between us, Mr. Madden,” murmured Theron, 
confusedly. 

“ Oh, don’t you make any mistake ! A hell of 
a lot of questions arise between us, Mr. Ware,” 
cried Theodore, with a sudden accession of vigor 
in tone and mien. “ And one of ’em is — go away 
from me, Michael ! — one of ’em is, I say, why 
don’t you leave our girls alone? They’ve got 
their own priests to make fools of themselves over, 
without any sneak of a Protestant parson coming 
meddling round them. You’re a married man 
into the bargain ; and you ’ve got in your house 
this minute a piano that my sister bought and paid 
for. Oh, I ’ve seen the entry in Thurston’s books 1 
You have the cheek to talk to me about being 
drunk — why — ” 

These remarks were never concluded, for Father 
Forbes here clapped a hand abruptly over the 
offending mouth, and flung his free arm in a tight 
grip around the young man’s waist. “ Come with 
me, Michael 1 ” he said, and the two men led the 
reluctant and resisting Theodore at a sharp pace 
off into the woods. 

Theron and Celia stood and watched them dis- 
appear among the undergrowth. “ It ’s the dirty 
368 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Foley blood that’s in him,” he heard her say, as 
if between clenched teeth. 

The girl’s big brown eyes, when Theron looked 
into them again, were still fixed upon the screen 
of foliage, and dilated like those of a Medusa 
mask. The blood had gone away, and left the 
fair face and neck as white, it seemed to him, as 
marble. Even her lips, fiercely bitten together, 
appeared colorless. The picture of consuming 
and powerless rage which she presented, and the 
shuddering tremor which ran over her form, as 
visible as the quivering track of a gust of wind 
across a pond, awed and frightened him. 

Tenderness toward her helpless state came too, 
and uppermost. He drew her arm into his, and 
turned their backs upon the picnic scene. 

" Let us walk a little up the path into the 
woods,” he said, “ and get away from all this.” 

“The further away the better,” she answered 
bitterly, and he felt the shiver run through her 
again as she spoke. 

The methodical waltz- music from that unseen 
dancing platform rose again above all other sounds. 
They moved up the woodland path, their steps in- 
sensibly falling into the rhythm of its strains, and 
vanished from sight among the tree* 


CHAPTER XXIV 


Theron and Celia walked in silence for some 
minutes, until the noises of the throng they had 
left behind were lost. The path they followed 
had grown indefinite among the grass and creepers 
of the forest carpet ; now it seemed to end alto- 
gether in a little copse of young birches, the deli- 
cately graceful stems of which were clustered about 
a parent stump, long since decayed and overgrown 
with lichens and layers of thick moss. 

As the two paused, the girl suddenly sank upon 
her knees, then threw herself face forward upon 
the soft green bank which had formed itself above 
the roots of the ancient mother- tree. Her com- 
panion looked down in pained amazement at what 
he saw. Her body shook with the violence of 
recurring sobs, or rather gasps of wrath and grief. 
Her hands, with stiffened, claw-like fingers, dug 
into the moss and tangle of tiny vines, and tore 
them by the roots. The half-stifled sounds of 
weeping that arose from where her face grovelled 
in the leaves were terrible to his ears. He knew 
not what to say or do, but gazed in resourceless 
suspense at the strange figure she made. It 
- 37 °. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


seemed a cruelly long time that she lay there, 
almost at his feet, struggling fiercely with the 
fury that was in her. 

All at once the paroxysms passed away, the 
sounds of wild weeping ceased. Celia sat up, and 
with her handkerchief wiped the tears and leafy 
fragments from her face. She rearranged her hat 
and the braids of her hair with swift, instinctive 
touches, brushed the woodland debris from her 
front, and sprang to her feet. 

“ I ’m all right now,” she said briskly. There 
was palpable effort in her light tone, and in the 
stormy sort of smile which she forced upon her 
blotched and perturbed countenance, but they 
were only too welcome to Theron’s anxious mood. 

a Thank God ! ” he blurted out, all radiant with 
relief. “ I feared you were going to have a fit — 
or something.” 

Celia laughed, a little artificially at first, then 
with a genuine surrender to the comic side of his 
visible fright. The mirth came back into the 
brown depths of her eyes again, and her face 
cleared itself of tear-stains and the marks of agi- 
tation. “ I am a nice quiet party for a Methodist 
minister to go walking in the woods with, am I 
not?” she cried, shaking her skirts and smiling 
at him. 

“ I am not a Methodist minister — please ! ” 
answered Theron, — “at least not to-day, — and 
— with you! I am just a man, — nothing 

- 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


more, — a man who has escaped from lifelong 
imprisonment, and feels for the first time what it 
fs to be free l ” 

“ Ah, my friend,” Celia said, shaking her head 
slowly, “ I ’m afraid you deceive yourself. You 
are not by any means free. You are only look- 
ing out of the window of your prison, as you call 
it. The doors are locked, just the same.” 

“ I will smash them ! ” he declared, with con- 
fidence. “Or for that matter, I have smashed 
them, — battered them to pieces. You don’t re- 
alize what progress I have made, what changes 
there have been in me since that night, — you 
remember that wonderful night ! I am quite 
another being, I assure you ! And really it dates 
from way beyond that, — why, from the very first 
evening, when I came to you in the church. The 
window in Father Forbes’ room was open, and I 
stood by it listening to the music next door, and 
I could just faintly see on the dark window across 
the alley-way a stained-glass picture of a woman. 
I suppose it was the Virgin Mary. She had hair 
like yours, and your face, too ; and that is why I 
went into the church and found you. Yes, that 
is why.” 

Celia regarded him with gravity. “ You will 
get yourself into great trouble, my friend,” she said. 

“ That ’s where you ’re wrong,” put in Theron. 
“ Not that I ’d mind any trouble in this wide 
world, so long as you called me ‘ my friend,’ but 
372 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


I ’m not going to get into any at all. I know a 
trick worth two of that. I ’ve learned to be a 
showman. I can preach now far better than I 
used to, and I can get through my work in half 
th|e time, and keep on the right side of my people, 
and get along with perfect smoothness. I was too 
green before. I took the thing seriously, and I 
let every mean-fisted curmudgeon and crazy fan- 
atic worry me, and keep me on pins and needles. 
I don’t do that any more. I ’ve taken a new 
measure of life. I see now what life is really 
worth, and I ’m going to have my share of it. 
Why should I deliberately deny myself all possible 
happiness for the rest of my days, simply because 
I made a fool of myself when I was in my teens? 
Other men are not eternally punished like that, 
for what they did as boys, and I won’t submit to 
it either. I will be as free to enjoy myself as — 
as Father Forbes.” 

Celia smiled softly, and shook her head again. 
“ Poor man, to call him free ! ” she said : “ why, 
he is bound hand and foot. You don’t in the 
least realize how he is hedged about, the work he 
has to do, the thousand suspicious eyes that watch 
his every movement, eager to bring the Bishop 
down upon him. And then think of his sacrifice, 
— the great sacrifice of all, — to never know what 
love means, to forswear his manhood, to live a 
forlorn, celibate life — you have no idea how sadly 
that appeals to a woman.” 

?7 3 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

“ Let us sit down here fora little,” said Theron ; 
“ we seem at the end of the path.” She seated 
herself on the root- based mound, and he reclined 
at her side, with an arm carelessly extended 
behind her on the moss. 

“ I can see what you mean,” he went on, after 
a pause. “ But to me, do you know, there is an 
enormous fascination in celibacy. You forget that 
I know the reverse of the medal. I know how the 
mind can be cramped, the nerves harassed, the 
ambitions spoiled and rotted, the whole existence 
darkened and belittled, by — by the other thing. I 
have never talked to you before about my marriage.” 

“ I don’t think we ’d better talk about it now,” 
observed Celia. “There must be many more 
amusing topics.” 

He missed the spirit of her remark. “You are 
right,” he said slowly. “ It is too sad a thing to 
talk about. But there ! it is my load, and I bear 
it, and there ’s nothing more to be said.” 

Theron drew a heavy sigh, and let his fingers 
toy abstractedly with a ribbon on the outer edge 
of Celia’s penumbra of apparel. 

“ No,” she said. “ We must n’t snivel, and we 
must n’t sulk. When I get into a rage it makes 
me ill, and I storm my way through it and tear 
things, but it does n’t last long, and I come out of 
it feeling all the better. I don’t know that I ’ve 
ever seen your wife. I suppose she has n’t got red 
hair? ” 


374 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ I think it ’s a kind of light brown,” answered 
Theron, with an effect of exerting his memory. 

“ It seems that you only take notice of hair in 
stained-glass windows,” was Celia’s comment. 

“ Oh-h ! ” he murmured reproachfully, “ as 
if — as if — but I won’t say what I was going to.” 

“That ’s not fair ! ” she said. The little touch 
of whimsical mockery which she gave to the 
serious declaration was delicious to him. “You 
have me at such a disadvantage 1 Here am I rat- 
tling out whatever comes into my head, exposing 
all my lightest emotions, and laying bare my very 
heart in candor, and you meditate, you turn things 
over cautiously in your mind, like a second Machia- 
velli. I grow afraid of you; you are so subtle 
and mysterious in your reserves.” 

Theron gave a tug at the ribbon, to show the 
joy he had in her delicate chaff. “ No, it is you 
who are secretive,” he said. “ You never told me 
about — about the piano.” 

The word was out ! A minute before it had 
seemed incredible to him that he should ever have 
the courage to utter it — but here it was. He 
laid firm hold upon the ribbon, which it appeared 
hung from her waist, and drew himself a trifle 
nearer to her. “ I could never have consented to 
take it, I’m afraid,” he went on in a low voice, 
“ if I had known. And even as it is, I fear it 
won’t be possible.” 

“ What are you afraid of?” asked Celia. “Why 

375 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


should n’t you take it ? People in your profession 
never do get anything unless it ’s given to them, 
do they ? I ’ve always understood it was like that. 
I ’ve often read of donation parties — that ’s what 
they ’re called, is n’t it ? — where everybody is 
supposed to bring some gift to the minister. 
Very well, then, I ’ve simply had a donation party 
of my own, that ’s all. Unless you mean that my 
being a Catholic makes a difference. I had 
supposed you were quite free from that kind ot 
prejudice.” 

“ So I am ! Believe me, lam!” urged Theron. 
“ When I ’m with you, it seems impossible to 
realize that there are people so narrow and con- 
tracted in their natures as to take account of such 
things. It is another atmosphere that I breathe 
near you. How could you imagine that such a 
thought — about our difference of creed — would 
enter my head? In fact,” he concluded with a 
nervous half-laugh, “ there is n’t any such differ- 
ence. Whatever your religion is, it ’s mine too. 
You remember — you adopted me as a Greek.” 

“ Did I?” she rejoined. “Well, if that’s the 
case, it leaves you without a leg to stand on. I 
challenge you to find any instance where a Greek 
made any difficulties about accepting a piano 
from a friend. But seriously — while we are talk- 
ing about it — you introduced the subject : I 
didn’t — I might as well explain to you that I 
had no such intention, when I picked the instru- 
376 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ment out. It was later, when I was talking to 
Thurston’s people about the price, that the whim 
seized me. Now it is the one fixed rule of my 
life to obey my whims. Whatever occurs to me 
as a possibly pleasant thing to do, straight like a 
flash, I go and do it. It is the only way that a 
person with means, with plenty of money, can 
preserve any freshness of character. If they stop 
to think what it would be prudent to do, they get 
crusted over immediately. That is the curse of 
rich people, — they teach themselves to distrust 
and restrain every impulse toward unusual actions. 
They get to feel that it is more necessary foi 
them to be cautious and conventional than it is 
for others. I would rather work at a wash-tub 
than occupy that attitude toward my bank account. 
I fight against any sign of it that I detect rising 
in my mind. The instant a wish occurs to me, I 
rush to gratify it. That is my theory of life. 
That accounts for the piano ; and I don’t see that 
you’ve anything to say about it at all.” 

It seemed very convincing, this theory of life. 
Somehow, the thought of Miss Madden’s riches 
had never before assumed prominence in Theron’s 
mind. Of course her father was very wealthy, but 
it had not occurred to him that the daughter’s 
emancipation might run to the length of a personal 
fortune. He knew so little of rich people and 
their ways ! 

He lifted his head, and looked up at Celia 
277 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


with an awakened humility and awe in his glance. 
The glamour of a separate banking-account shone 
upon her. Where the soft woodland light played 
in among the strands of her disordered hair, he 
saw the veritable gleam of gold. A mysterious 
new suggestion of power blended itself with the 
beauty of her face, was exhaled in the faint per- 
fume of her garments. He maintained a timorous 
hold upon the ribbon, wondering at his hardihood 
in touching it, or being near her at all. 

“ What surprises me,” he heard himself saying, 
“ is that you are contented to stay in Octavius. 
I should think that you would travel — go abroad 
— see the beautiful things of the world, surround 
yourself with the luxuries of big cities, — and that 
sort of thing.” 

Celia regarded the forest prospect straight in 
front of her with a pensive gaze. “ Sometime — * 
no doubt I will sometime,” she said abstractedly. 

“ One reads so much nowadays,” he went on, 
“ of American heiresses going to Europe and 
marrying dukes and noblemen. I suppose you 
will do that too. Princes would fight one another 
for you” 

The least touch of a smile softened for an 
instant the impassivity of her countenance. Then 
she stared harder than ever at the vague, leafy 
distance. “That is the old-fashioned idea,” she 
said, in a musing tone, “ that women must belong 
to somebody, as if they were curios, or statues, or 
■ 3l 8 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


race- horses. You don’t understand, my friend^ 
that I have a different view. I am myself, and I 
belong to myself, exactly as much as any man. 
The notion that any other human being could 
conceivably obtain the slightest property rights in 
me is as preposterous, as ridiculous, as — what 
shall I say ? — as the notion of your being taken 
out with a chain on your neck and sold by auction 
as a slave, down on the canal bridge. I should 
be ashamed to be alive for another day, if any 
other thought were possible to me.” 

“That is not the generally accepted view, I 
should think,” faltered Theron. 

“No more is it the accepted view that young 
married Methodist ministers should sit out alone 
in the woods with red-headed Irish girls. No, 
my friend, let us find what the generally accepted 
views are, and as fast as we find them set our 
heels on them. There is no other way to live 
like real human beings. What on earth is it to 
me that other women crawl about on all- fours, 
and fawn like dogs on any hand that will buckle 
a collar onto them, and toss them the leavings 
of the table ? I am not related to them. I have 
nothing to do with them. They cannot make any 
rules for me. If pride and dignity and independ- 
ence are dead in them, why, so much the worse 
for them ! It is no affair of mine. Certainly it is 
no reason why I should get down and grovel also. 
No ; I at least stand erect on my legs.” 

379 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Mr. Ware sat up, and stared confusedly, with 
round eyes and parted lips, at his companion. 
Instinctively his brain dragged forth to the surface 
those epithets which the doctor had hurled in 
bitter contempt at her, — “ mad ass, a mere bundle 
of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed lewdness.” 
The words rose in their order on his memory, 
hard and sharp-edged, like arrow-heads. But to 
sit there, quite at her side ; to breathe the same 
air, and behold the calm loveliness of her profile ; 
to touch the ribbon of her dress, — and all the 
while to hold these poisoned darts of abuse levelled 
in thought at her breast, — it was monstrous. He 
could have killed the doctor at that moment. 
With an effort, he drove the foul things from his 
mind, — scattered them back into the darkness. 
He felt that he had grown pale, and wondered 
if she had heard the groan that seemed to have 
been forced from him in the struggle. Or was 
the groan imaginary ? 

Celia continued to sit unmoved, composedly 
looking upon vacancy. Theron’s eyes searched her 
face in vain for any sign of consciousness that she 
had astounded and bewildered him. She did not 
seem to be thinking of him at all. The proud calm 
of her thoughtful countenance suggested instead 
occupation with lofty and remote abstractions and 
noble ideals. Contemplating her, he suddenly 
perceived that what she had been saying was great, 
wonderful, magnificent. An involuntary thrill ran 
380 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


through his veins at recollection of her words. 
His fancy likened it to the sensation he used to 
feel as a youth, when the Fourth of July reader 
bawled forth that opening clause : “ When, in the 
course of human events, it becomes necessary,” etc. 
It was nothing less than another Declaration of 
Independence he had been listening to. 

He sank again recumbent at her side, and 
stretched the arm behind her, nearer than before. 
“ Apparently, then, you will never marry.” His 
voice trembled a little. 

“ Most certainly not ! ” said Celia. 

“ You spoke so feelingly a little while ago,” he 
ventured along, with hesitation, “ about how sadly 
the notion of a priest’s sacrificing himself — never 
knowing what love meant — appealed to a woman. 
I should think that the idea of sacrificing herself 
would seem to her even sadder still.” 

“ I don’t remember that we mentioned that” 
she replied. " How do you mean, — sacrificing 
herself? ” 

Theron gathered some of the outlying folds of 
her dress in his hand, and boldly patted and 
caressed them. “You, so beautiful and so free, 
with such fine talents and abilities,” he murmured ; 
“you, who could have the whole world at your 
feet, — are you, too, never going to know what 
love means? Do you call that no sacrifice? To 
me it is the most terrible that my imagination can 
conceive.” 

381 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Celia laughed, — a gentle, amused little laugh, in 
which Theron’s ears traced elements of tenderness. 
“You must regulate that imagination of yours,” 
she said playfully. “ It conceives the thing that is 
not. Pray, when ” — and here, turning her head, 
she bent -down upon his face a gaze of arch 
mock-seriousness — “ pray, when did I describe 
myself in these terms? When did I say that I 
should never know what love meant?” 

For answer Theron laid his head down upon his 
arm, and closed his eyes, and held his face against 
the draperies encircling her. “ I cannot think ! ” 
he groaned. 

The thing that came uppermost in his mind, as 
it swayed and rocked in the tempest of emotion, 
was the strange reminiscence of early childhood in 
it all. It was like being a little boy again, nestling 
in an innocent, unthinking transport of affection 
against his mother’s skirts. The tears he felt scald- 
ing his eyes were the spontaneous, unashamed 
tears of a child; the tremulous and exquisite 
joy which spread, wave-like, over him, at once 
reposeful and yearning, was full of infantile purity 
and sweetness. He had not comprehended at all 
before what wellsprings of spiritual beauty, what 
limpid depths of idealism, his nature contained. 

“We were speaking of our respective religions,” 
he heard Celia say, as imperturbably as if there 
had been no digression worth mentioning. 

“Yes,” he assented, and moved his head so that 
382 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

he looked up at her back hair, and the leaves high 
above, mottled against the sky. The wish to lie 
there, where now he could just catch the rose-leaf 
line of her under-chin as well, was very strong upon 
him. “Yes?” he repeated. 

“I cannot talk to you like that,” she said; 
and he sat up again shamefacedly. 

“Yes — I think we were speaking of religions — 
some time ago,” he faltered, to relieve the situa- 
tion. The dreadful thought that she might be 
annoyed began to oppress him. 

“Well, you said whatever my religion was, it was 
yours too. That entitles you at least to be told 
what the religion is. Now, I am a Catholic.” 

Theron, much mystified, nodded his head. Could 
it be possible, — was there coming a deliberate 
suggestion that he should become a convert ? 
“Yes — I know,” he murmured. 

“But I should explain that I am only a Catholic 
in the sense that its symbolism is pleasant to me. 
You remember what Schopenhauer said, — you 
cannot have the water by itself: you must also 
have the jug that it is in. Very well ; the Catholic 
religion is my jug. I put into it the things I like. 
They were all there long ago, thousands of years 
ago. The Jews threw them out ; we will put them 
back again. We will restore art and poetry and 
the love of beauty, and the gentle, spiritual, soulful 
life. The Greeks had it ; and Christianity would 
have had it too, if it had n’t been for those brutes 

383 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


they call the Fathers. They loved ugliness and 
dirt and the thought of hell-fire. They hated 
women. In all the earlier stages of the Church, 
women were very prominent in it. Jesus himself 
appreciated women, and delighted to have them 
about him, and talk with them and listen to them. 
That was the very essence of the Greek spirit ; 
and it breathed into Christianity at its birth a 
sweetness and a grace which twenty generations 
of cranks and savages like Paul and Jerome and 
Tertullian weren’t able to extinguish. But the 
very man, Cyril, who killed Hypatia, and thus 
began the dark ages, unwittingly did another thing 
which makes one almost forgive him. To please 
the Egyptians, he secured the Church’s acceptance 
of the adoration of the Virgin. It is that idea 
which has kept the Greek spirit alive, and grown 
and grown, till at last it will rule the world. It 
was only epileptic Jews who could imagine a 
religion without sex in it.” 

“ I remember the pictures of the Virgin in your 
room,” said Theron, feeling more himself again. 
“ I wondered if they quite went with the statues.” 

The remark won a smile from Celia’s lips. 

“ They get along together better than you sup- 
pose,” she answered. " Besides, they are not all 
pictures of Mary. One of them, standing on the 
moon, is of Isis with the infant Horus in her arms. 
Another might as well be Mahamie, bearing the 
miraculously born Buddha, or Olympias with her 
384. , 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


child Alexander, or even Perictione holding her 
babe Plato, — all these were similar cases, you 
know. Almost every religion had its Immaculate 
Conception. What does it all come to, except to 
show us that man turns naturally toward the worship 
of the maternal idea ? That is the deepest of all 
our instincts, — love of woman, who is at once 
daughter and wife and mother. It is that that 
makes the world go round.” 

Brave thoughtj shaped themselves in Theron’s 
mind, and shone forth in a confident yet wistful 
smile on his face. 

“ It is a pity you cannot change estates with me 
for one minute,” he said, in steady, low tones. 
“ Then you would realize the tremendous truth of 
what you have been saying. It is only your intel- 
lect that has reached out and grasped the idea. 
If you were in my place, you would discover that 
your heart was bursting with it as well.” 

Celia turned and looked at him. 

“ I myself,” he went on, “ would not have known, 
half an hour ago, what you meant by the worship 
of the maternal idea. I am much older than you. 
I am a strong, mature man. But when I lay down 
there, and shut my eyes, — because the charm and 
marvel of this whole experience had for the mo- 
ment overcome me, — the strangest sensation 
seized upon me. It was absolutely as if I were a 
boy again, a good, pure-minded, fond little child, 
and you were the mother that I idolized.” 
z 5 „ $ 8 * 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Celia had not taken her eyes from his face. u I 
find myself liking you better at this moment,” she 
said, with gravity, “ than I have ever liked you 
before.” 

Then, as by a sudden impulse, she sprang to her 
feet. “ Come ! ” she cried, her voice and manner 
all vivacity once more, “ we have been here long 
enough.” 

Upon the instant, as Theron was more labori- 
ously getting up, it became apparent to them both 
that perhaps they had been there too long. 

A boy with a gun under his arm, and two gray 
squirrels tied by the tails slung across his shoulder, 
stood at the entrance to the glade, some dozen 
paces away, regarding them with undisguised inter- 
est. Upon the discovery that he was in turn ob- 
served, he resumed his interrupted progress through 
the woods, whistling softly as he went, and van- 
ished among the trees. 

“ Heavens above ! ” groaned Theron, shudder- 
ingly. 

“Know him?” he went on, in answer to the 
glance of inquiry on his companion’s face. “ I 
should think I did ! He spades my — my wife’s 
garden for her. He used to bring our milk. He 
works in the law office of one of my trustees, — the 
one who is n’t friendly to me, but is very friendly 
indeed with my — with Mrs. Ware. Oh, what 
shall I do? It may easily mean my ruin ! ” 

Celia looked at him attentively. The color had 

386 - 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


gone out of his face, and with it the effect of earn- 
estness and mental elevation which, a minute be- 
fore, had caught her fancy. “ Somehow, I fear 
that I do not like you quite so much just now, my 
friend,” she remarked. 

“ In God’s name, don’t say that ! ” urged The- 
ron. He raised his voice in agitated entreaty. 
“ You don’t know what these people are, — how they 
would leap at the barest hint of a scandal about 
me. In my position I am a thousand times more 
defenceless than any woman. Just a single whis- 
per, and I am done for ! ” 

“ Let me point out to you, Mr. Ware,” said 
Celia, slowly, “ that to be seen sitting and talking 
with me, whatever doubts it may raise as to a gen- 
tleman’s intellectual condition, need not necessa- 
rily blast his social reputation beyond all hope 
whatever.” 

Theron stared at her, as if he had not grasped 
her meaning. Then he winced visibly under it, 
and put out his hands to implore her. " Forgive 
me ! Forgive me ! ” he pleaded. “ I was beside 
myself for the moment with the fright of the thing. 
Oh, say you do forgive me, Celia ! ” He made 
haste to support this daring use of her name. “ I 
have been so happy to-day — so deeply, so vastly 
happy — like the little child I spoke of — and 
that is so new in my lonely life — that — the sud- 
denness of the thing — it just for the instant un- 
strung me. Don’t be too hard on me for it ! 
38 ; - 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


And I had hoped, too, — I had had such genuine 
heartfelt pleasure in the thought, — that, an hour 
or two ago, when you were unhappy, perhaps it 
had been some sort of consolation to you that I 
Was with you.” 

Celia was looking away. When he took her 
hand she did not withdraw it, but turned and nod- 
ded in musing general assent to what he had said. 
“ Yes, we have both been unstrung, as you call it, 
to-day,” she said, “ decidedly out of pitch. Let 
each forgive the other, and say no more about it.” 

She took his arm, and they retraced their steps 
along the path, again in silence. The labored 
noise of the orchestra, as it were, returned to meet 
them. They halted at an intersecting footpath. 

“ I go back to my slavery, — my double bond- 
age,” said Theron, letting his voice sink to a sigh. 
“ But even if I am put on the rack for it, I shall 
have had one day of glory.” 

" I think you may kiss me, in memory of that 
one day — or of a few minutes in that day,” said 
Celia. 

Their lips brushed each other in a swift, almost 
perfunctory caress. 

Theron went his way at a hurried pace, the 
sobered tones of her “ good-bye ” beating upon 
his brain with every measure of the droning waltz- 
music. 


388 


PART IV 


CHAPTER XXV 

The memory of the kiss abode with Theron. 
Like Aaron’s rod, it swallowed up one by one all 
competing thoughts and recollections, and made 
his brain its slave. 

Even as he strode back through the woods to 
the camp-meeting, it was the kiss that kept his 
feet in motion, and guided their automatic course. 
All along the watches of the restless night, it was 
the kiss that bore him sweet company, and wan- 
dered with him from one broken dream of bliss to 
another. Next day, it was the kiss that made of 
life for him a sort of sunlit wonderland. He 
preached his sermon in the morning, and took his 
appointed part in the other services of afternoon 
and evening, apparently to everybody’s satisfac- 
tion : to him it was all a vision. 

When the beautiful full moon rose, this Sunday 
evening, and glorified the clearing and the forest 
with its mellow harvest radiance, he could have 
groaned with the burden of his joy. He went out 
389 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


alone into the light, and bared his head to it, and 
stood motionless for a long time. In all his life, 
he had never been impelled as powerfully toward 
earnest and soulful thanksgiving. The impulse to 
kneel, there in the pure, tender moonlight, and 
lift up offerings of praise to God, kept uppermost 
in his mind. Some formless reservation restrained 
him from the act itself, but the spirit of it hallowed 
his mood. He gazed up at the broad luminous 
face of the satellite. “ You are our God,” he 
murmured. “ Hers and mine ! You are the 
most beautiful of heavenly creatures, as she is of 
the angels on earth. I am speechless with rever- 
ence for you both.” 

It was not until the camp-meeting broke up, 
four days later, and Theron with the rest returned 
to town, that the material aspects of what had hap- 
pened, and might be expected to happen, forced 
themselves upon his mind. The kiss was a child 
of the forest. So long as Theron remained in the 
camp, the image of the kiss, which was enshrined 
in his heart and ministered to by all his thoughts, 
continued enveloped in a haze of sylvan mystery, 
like a dryad. Suggestions of its beauty and holi- 
ness came to him in the odors of the woodland, 
at the sight of wild flowers and water-lilies. 
When he walked alone in unfamiliar parts of the 
forest, he carried about with him the half-conscious 
idea of somewhere coming upon a strange, hidden 
pool which mortal eye had not seen before, — a 
39o 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


deep, sequestered mere of spring-fed waters, walled 
in by rich, tangled growths of verdure, and bear- 
ing upon its virgin bosom only the shadows of the 
primeval wilderness, and the light of the eternal 
skies. His fancy dwelt upon some such nook as 
the enchanted home of the fairy that possessed his 
soul. The place, though he never found it, be- 
came real to him. As he pictured it, there rose 
sometimes from among the lily-pads, stirring the 
translucent depths and fluttering over the water’s 
surface drops like gems, the wonderful form of a 
woman, with pale leaves wreathed in her luxuriant 
red hair, and a skin which gave forth light. 

With the home-coming to Octavius, his dreams 
began to take more account of realities. In a day 
or two he was wide awake, and thinking hard. 
The kiss was as much as ever the ceaseless com- 
panion of his hours, but it no longer insisted upon 
shrouding itself in vines and woodland creepers, or 
outlining itself in phosphorescent vagueness against 
mystic backgrounds of nymph- haunted glades. It 
advanced out into the noonday, and assumed 
tangible dimensions and substance. He saw that 
it was related to the facts of his daily life, and had, 
in turn, altered his own relations to all these 
facts. 

What ought he to do ? What could he do ? 
Apparently, nothing but wait. He waited for a 
week, — then for another week. The conclusion 
that the initiative had been left to him began to 
39i 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


take shape in his mind. From this it seemed but 
a step to the passionate resolve to act at once. 

Turning the situation over and over in his 
anxious thoughts, two things stood out in special 
prominence. One was that Celia loved him. 
The other was that the boy in Gorringe’s law 
office, and possibly Gorringe, and heaven only 
knew how many others besides, had reasons for 
suspecting this to be true. 

And what about Celia? Side by side with the 
moving rapture of thinking about her as a woman, 
there rose the substantial satisfaction of contem- 
plating her as Miss Madden. She had kissed him, 
and she was very rich. The things gradually 
linked themselves before his eyes. He tried a 
thousand varying guesses at what she proposed to 
do, and each time reined up his imagination by 
the reminder that she was confessedly a creature 
of whims, who proposed to do nothing, but was 
capable of all things. 

And as to the boy. If he had blabbed what he 
saw, it was incredible that somebody should not 
take the subject up, and impart a scandalous twist 
to it, and send it rolling like a snowball to gather 
up exaggeration and foul innuendo till it was big 
enough to overwhelm him. What would happen 
to him if a formal charge were preferred against 
him? He looked it up in the Discipline. Of 
course, if his accusers magnified their mean sus- 
picions and calumnious imaginings to the point of 
392 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


formulating a charge, it would be one of immo- 
rality. They could prove nothing ; there was noth- 
ing to prove. At the worst, it was an indiscretion, 
which would involve his being admonished by his 
Presiding Elder. Or if these narrow bigots con- 
fused slanders with proofs, and showed that they 
intended to convict him, then it would be open to 
him to withdraw from the ministry, in advance of 
his condemnation. His relation to the church 
would be the same as if he had been expelled, but 
to the outer world it would be different. And 
supposing he did withdraw from the ministry? 

Yes ; this was the important point. What if he 
did abandon this mistaken profession of his? On 
its mental side the relief would be prodigious, 
unthinkable. But on the practical side, the bread- 
and-butter side? For some days Theron paused 
with a shudder when he reached this question. 
The thought of the plunge into unknown material 
responsibilities gave him a sinking heart. He 
tried to imagine himself lecturing, canvassing for 
books or insurance policies, writing for newspapers 
— and remained frightened. But suddenly one 
day it occurred to him that these qualms and 
forebodings were sheer folly. Was not Celia 
rich? Would she not with lightning swiftness 
draw forth that check-book, like the flashing sword 
of a champion from its scabbard, and run to his 
relief? Why, of course. It was absurd not to 
have thought of that before. 

393 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


lie recalled her momentary anger with him $ 
that afternoon in the woods, when he had cried 
out that discovery would mean ruin to him. He 
saw clearly enough now that she had been grieved 
at his want of faith in her protection. In his 
flurry of fright, he had lost sight of the fact that, 
if exposure and trouble came to him, she would 
naturally feel that she had been the cause of his 
martyrdom. It was plain enough now. If he 
got into hot water, it would be solely on account 
of his having been seen with her. He had walked 
into the woods with her, — “ the further the better” 
had been her own words, — out of pure kindliness, 
and the desire to lead her away from the scene of 
her brother’s and her own humiliation. But why 
amplify arguments? Her own warm heart would 
tell her, on the instant, how he had been sacri- 
ficed for her sake, and would bring her, eager 
and devoted, to his succor. 

That was all right, then. Slowly, from this point, 
suggestions expanded themselves. The future 
could be, if he willed it, one long serene triumph 
of love, and lofty intellectual companionship, and 
existence softened and enriched at every point by 
all that wealth could command, and the most 
exquisite tastes suggest. Should he will it ! Ah ! 
the question answered itself. But he could not 
enter upon this beckoning heaven of a future 
until he had freed himself. When Celia said to 
him, “ Come ! ” he must not be in the position to 
394 


the damnation of theron ware 


reply, “I should like to, but unfortunately I am 
tied by the leg.” He should have to leave Octa- 
vius, leave the ministry, leave everything. He 
could not begin too soon to face these contin- 
gencies. 

Very likely Celia had not thought it out as far 
as this. With her, it was a mere vague “ some- 
time I may.” But the harder masculine sense, 
Theron felt, existed for the very purpose of cor- 
recting and giving point to these loose feminine 
notions of time and space. It was for him to 
clear away the obstacles, and map the plans out 
with definite decision. 

One warm afternoon, as he lolled in his easy- 
chair under the open window of his study, musing 
upon the ever-shifting phases of this vast, com- 
plicated, urgent problem, some chance words from 
the sidewalk in front came to his ears, and, coming, 
remained to clarify his thoughts. 

Two ladies whose voices were strange to him 
had stopped — as so many people almost daily 
stopped — to admire the garden of the parsonage. 
One of them expressed her pleasure in general 
terms. Said the other, — 

“ My husband declares those dahlias alone 
couldn’t be matched for fifty dollars, and that 
some of those gladiolus must have cost three or 
four dollars apiece. I know we’ve spent simply 
oceans of money on our garden, and it does r t 
begin to compare with this.” 

395 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ It seems like a sinful waste to me,” said her 
companion. 

“No-o,” the other hesitated. “No, I don’t 
think quite that — if you can afford it just as well 
as not. But it does seem to me that I ’d rather 
live in a little better house, and not spend it all 
on flowers. Just look at that cactus ! ” 

The voices died away. Theron sat up, with a 
look of arrested thought upon his face, then sprang 
to his feet and moved hurriedly through the parlor 
to an open front window. Peering out with 
caution he saw that the two women receding from 
view were fashionably dressed and evidently came 
from homes of means. He stared after them in 
a blank way until they turned a corner. 

He went into the hall then, put on his frock- 
coat and hat, and stepped out into the garden. 
He was conscious of having rather avoided it 
heretofore, — not altogether without reasons of 
his own, lying unexamined somewhere in the 
recesses of his mind. Now he walked slowly 
about, and examined the flowers with great atten- 
tiveness. The season was advancing, and he saw 
that many plants had gone out of bloom. But 
what a magnificent plenitude of blossoms still 
remained ! 

Fifty dollars’ worth of dahlias, — that was what 
the stranger had said. Theron hardly brought 
himself to credit the statement ; but all the same 
it was apparent to even his uninformed eye that 

396 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


these huge, imbricated, flowering masses, with 
their extraordinary half-colors, must be unusual. 
He remembered that the boy in Gorringe’s office 
had spoken of just one lot of plants costing thirty- 
one dollars and sixty cents, and there had been 
two other lots as well. The figures remained sur- 
prisingly distinct in his memory. It was no good 
deceiving himself any longer : of course these 
were the plants that Gorringe had spent his money 
upon, here all about him. 

As he surveyed them with a sour regard, a cool 
breeze stirred across the garden. The tall, over- 
laden flower-spikes of gladioli bent and nodded 
at him ; the hollyhocks and flaming alvias, the 
clustered blossoms on the standard roses, the deli- 
cately painted lilies on their stilt- like stems, fluttered 
in the wind, and seemed all bowing satirically to 
him. Yes, Levi Gorringe paid for us ! ” He 
almost heard their mocking declaration. 

Out in the back-yard, where a longer day of 
sunshine dwelt, there were many other flowers, and 
notably a bed of geraniums which literally made 
the eye ache. Standing at this rear corner of the 
house, he caught the droning sound of Alice’s voice, 
humming a hymn to herself as she went about her 
kitchen work. He saw her through the open win- 
dow. She was sweeping, and had a sort of cap on 
her head which did not add to the graces of her ap- 
pearance. He looked at her with a hard glance, 
recalling as a fresh grievance the ten days of intoler- 
39 7 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


able boredom he had spent cooped up in a ridicu- 
lous little tent with her, at the camp-meeting. She 
must have realized at the time how odious the en- 
forced companionship was to him. Yes, beyond 
doubt she did. It came back to him now that they 
had spoken but rarely to each other. She had not 
even praised his sermon upon the Sabbath-question, 
which every one else had been in raptures over. 
For that matter she no longer praised anything he 
did, and took obvious pains to preserve toward him 
a distant demeanor. So much the better, he felt 
himself thinking. If she chose to behave in that 
offish and unwifely fashion, she could blame no one 
but herself for its results. 

She had seen him, and came now to the window, 
watering-pot and broom in hand. She put her 
head out, to breathe a breath of dustless air, and 
began as if she would smile on him. Then her 
face chilled and stiffened, as she caught his look. 

“ Shall you be home for supper? ” she asked, in 
her iciest tone. 

He had not thought of going out before. The 
question, and the manner of it, gave immediate 
urgency to the idea of going somewhere. “ I may 
or I may not,” he replied. “ It is quite impossible 
for me to say.” He turned on his heel with this, 
and walked briskly out of the yard and down the 
street. 

It was the most natural thing that presently he 
should be strolling past the Madden house, and let- 

398 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ting a covert glance stray over its front and the 
grounds about it, as he loitered along. Every day 
since his return from the woods he had given the 
fates this chance of bringing Celia to meet him, 
without avail. He had hung about in the vicinity 
of the Catholic church on several evenings as well, 
but to no purpose. The organ inside was dumb, 
and he could detect no signs of Celia’s presence 
on the curtains of the pastorate next door. This 
day, too, there was no one visible at the home of 
the Maddens, and he walked on, a little sadly. It 
was weary work waiting for the signal that never 
came. 

But there were compensations. His mind re- 
verted doggedly to the flowers in his garden, and 
to Alice’s behavior toward him. They insisted 
upon connecting themselves in his thoughts. Why 
should Levi Gorringe, a money-lender, and there- 
fore the last man in the world to incur reckless 
expenditure, go and buy perhaps a hundred dollars* 
worth of flowers for his wife’s garden? It was 
time — high time — to face this question. And 
his experiencing religion afterward, just when Alice 
did, and marching down to the rail to kneel beside 
her, — that was a thing to be thought of, too. 

Meditation, it is true, hardly threw fresh light 
upon the matter. It was incredible, of course, 
that there should be anything wrong. To even 
shape a thought of Alice in connection with gal- 
lantry would be wholly impossible. Nor could it 
399 .* 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


be said that Gorringe, in bis new capacity as a 
professing church-member, had disclosed any sign 
of ulterior motives, or of insincerity. Yet there the 
facts were. While Theron pondered them, their 
mystery, if they involved a mystery, baffled him 
altogether. But when he had finished, he found 
himself all the same convinced that neither Alice 
nor Gorringe would be free to blame him for any- 
thing he might do. He had grounds for complaint 
against them. If he did not himself know just 
what these grounds were, it was certain enough 
that they knew. Very well, then, let them take the 
responsibility for what happened. 

It was indeed awkward that at the moment, as 
Theron chanced to emerge temporarily from his 
brown-study, his eyes fell full upon the spare, well- 
knit form of Levi Gorringe himself, standing only 
a few feet away, in the staircase entrance to his 
law office. His lean face, browned by the summer’s 
exposure, had a more Arabian aspect than ever. 
His hands were in his pockets, and he held an 
unlighted cigar between his teeth. He looked the 
Rev. Mr. Ware over calmly, and nodded recognition. 

Theron had halted instinctively. On the instant 
he would have given a great deal not to have 
stopped at all. It was stupid of him to have 
paused, but it would not do now to go on without 
words of some sort. He moved over to the door- 
way, and made a half-hearted pretence of looking 
at the photographs in one of the show-cases at its 
. 400 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


side. As Mr. Gorringe did not take his hands from 
his pockets, there was no occasion for any formal 
greeting. 

“ I had no idea that they took such good pictures 
in Octavius,” Theron remarked after a minute’s 
silence, still bending in examination of the 
photographs. 

“ They ought to ; they charge New York prices,” 
observed the lawyer, sententiously. 

Theron found in the words confirmation of his 
feeling that Gorringe was not naturally a lavish or 
extravagant man. Rather was he a careful and 
calculating man, who spent money only for a pur- 
pose. Though the minister continued gazing at 
the stiff presentments of local beauties and swains, 
his eyes seemed to see salmon-hued hollyhocks 
and spotted lilies instead. Suddenly a resolve 
came to him. He stood erect, and faced his 
trustee. 

“ Speaking of the price of things,” he said, with 
an effort of arrogance in his measured tone, “ I 
have never had an opportunity before of mention- 
ing the subject of the flowers you have so kindly 
furnished for my — for my garden.” 

“Why mention it now? ” queried Gorringe, with 
nonchalance. He turned his cigar about with a 
movement of his lips, and worked it into the 
comer of his mouth. He did not find it neces- 
sary to look at Theron at all. 

" Because,” began Mr. Ware, and then hesitated 
26 401 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


— “ because — well, it raises a question of my 
being under obligation, which I — ” 

“Oh, no, sir,” said the lawyer; “put that out 
of your mind. You are no more under obligation 
to me than I am to you. Oh, no, make yourself 
easy about that. Neither of us owes the other 
anything.” 

“ Not even good-will, — I take that to be your 
meaning,” retorted Theron, with some heat. 

“The words are yours, sir,” responded Gorringe, 
coolly. “ I do not object to them.” 

“ As you like,” put in the other. “ If it be so, 
why, then all the more reason why I should, under 
the circumstances — ” 

“Under what circumstances?” interposed the 
lawyer. “ Let us be clear about this thing as we 
go along. To what circumstances do you refer?” 

He had turned his eyes now, and looked Theron 
in the face. A slight protrusion of his lower jaw 
had given the cigar an upward tilt under the black 
mustache. 

“The circumstances are that you have brought 
or sent to my garden a great many very expensive 
flower-plants and bushes and so on.” 

“And you object? I had not supposed that 
clergymen in general — and you in particular — 
were so sensitive. Have donation parties, then, 
gone out of date?” 

“I understand your sneer well enough,” re- 
torted Theron, “but that can pass. The main 
4 ^* 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

point is, that you did me the honor to send these 
plants, — or to smuggle them in, — but never once 
deigned to hint to me that you had done so. No 
one told me. Except by mere accident, I should 
not have known to this day where they came 
from.” 

Mr. Gorringe twisted the cigar at another angle, 
with lines of grim amusement about the comer of 
his mouth. “ I should have thought,” he said with 
dry deliberation, “that possibly this fact might 
have raised in your mind the conceivable hypothe- 
sis that the plants might not be intended for you 
at all.” 

“ That is precisely it, sir,” said Theron. There 
were people passing, and he was forced to keep his 
voice down. It would have been a relief, he felt, 
to shout. “ That is it, — they were not intended 
for me.” 

“Well, then, what are you talking about?” 
The lawyer’s speech had become abrupt almost to 
incivility. 

“ I think my remarks have been perfectly clear,” 
said the minister, with dignity. It was a new 
experience to be addressed in that fashion. It 
occurred to him to add, “ Please remember that 
I am not in the witness-box, to be bullied or 
insulted by a professional.” 

Gorringe studied Theron’s face attentively with 
a cold, searching scrutiny. “ You may thank your 
stars you ’re not ! ” he said, with significance. 

403 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


What on earth could he mean? The words and 
the menacing tone greatly impressed Theron. In- 
deed, upon reflection, he found that they fright- 
ened him. The disposition to adopt a high tone 
with the lawyer was melting away. 

“ I do not see,” he began, and then deliberately 
allowed his voice to take on an injured and plain- 
tive inflection, — “I do not see why you should 
adopt this tone toward me — Brother Gorringe.” 

The lawyer scowled, and bit sharply into the 
cigar, but said nothing. 

“If I have unconsciously offended you in any 
way,” Theron went on, “ I beg you to tell me how. 
I liked you from the beginning of my pastorate 
here, and the thought that latterly we seemed to 
be drifting apart has given me much pain. But 
now it is still more distressing to find you actually 
disposed to quarrel with me. Surely, Brother 
Gorringe, between a pastor and a probationer 
who — ” 

“ No,” Gorringe broke in ; “ quarrel is n’t the 
word for it. There is n’t any quarrel, Mr. Ware.” 
He stepped down from the door-stone to the side- 
walk as he spoke, and stood face to face with 
Theron. Working-men with dinner-pails, and 
factory girls, were passing close to them, and he 
lowered his voice to a sharp, incisive half-whisper 
as he added, “ It would n’t be worth any grown 
man’s while to quarrel with so poor a creature as 
you are.” 


404, 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Theron stood confounded, with an empty stare 
of bewilderment on his face. It rose in his mind 
that the right thing to feel was rage, righteous 
indignation, fury ; but for the life of him, he could 
not muster any manly anger. The character of 
the insult stupefied him. 

“ I do not know that I have anything to say to 
you in reply,” he remarked, after what seemed to 
him a silence of minutes. His lips framed the 
words automatically, but they expressed well 
enough the blank vacancy of his mind. The 
suggestion that anybody deemed him a “poor 
creature ” grew more astounding, incomprehensi- 
ble, as it swelled in his brain. 

“No, I suppose not,” snapped Gorringe. 
“ You 're not the sort to stand up to men ; your 
form is to go round the corner and take it out of 
somebody weaker than yourself, — a defenceless 
woman, for instance.” 

“ Oh — ho ! ” said Theron. The exclamation 
had uttered itself. The sound of it seemed to 
clarify his muddled thoughts ; and as they ranged 
themselves in order, he began to understand. 
“ Oh — ho ! ” he said again, and nodded his head 
in token of comprehension. 

The lawyer, chewing his cigar with increased 
activity, glared at him. “ What do you mean ? n 
he demanded peremptorily. 

“Mean?” said the minister. “Oh, nothing 
that I feel called upon to explain to you.” 

40S 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


It was passing strange, but his self-possession 
had all at once returned to him. As it became 
more apparent that the lawyer was losing his 
temper, Theron found the courage to turn up 
the corners of his lips in show of a bitter little 
smile of confidence. He looked into the other’s 
dusky face, and flaunted this smile at it in con- 
temptuous defiance. “It is not a subject that I 
can discuss with propriety — at this stage,” he 
added. 

“ Damn you ! Are you talking about those 
flowers? ” 

“ Oh, I am not talking about anything in par- 
ticular,” returned Theron, “ not even the curious 
choice of language which my latest probationer 
*eems to prefer.” 

“ Go and strike my name off the list ! ” said 
Gorringe, with rising passion. “I was a fool to 
ever have it there. To think of being a proba- 
tioner of yours — my God ! ” 

“ That will be a pity — from one point of view,” 
remarked Theron, still with the ironical smile on 
his lips. “You seemed to enter upon the new life 
with such deliberation and fixity of purpose, too ! 
I can imagine the regrets your withdrawal will 
cause, in certain quarters. I only hope that it will 
not discourage those who accompanied you to the 
altar, and shared your enthusiasm at the time.” 
He had spoken throughout with studied slowness 
and an insolent nicety of utterance. 

406 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ You had better go away ! ” broke forth Gor- 
ringe. “ If you don’t, I shall forget myself.” 

“For the first time?” asked Theron. Then, 
warned by the flash in the lawyer’s eye, he turned 
on his heel and sauntered, with a painstaking 
assumption of a mind quite at ease, up the 
street. 

Gorringe’s own face twitched and his veins 
tingled as he looked after him. He spat the 
shapeless cigar out of his mouth into the gutter, and, 
drawing forth another from his pocket, clenched it 
between his teeth, his gaze following the tall form 
of the Methodist minister till it was merged in 
the crowd. 

“ Well, I ’m damned 1 ” he said aloud to himself. 

The photographer had come down to take in his 
show-cases for the night. He looked up from his 
task at the exclamation, and grinned inquiringly. 

“ I ’ve just been talking to a man,” said the 
lawyer, “who’s so much meaner than any other 
man I ever heard of that it takes my breath away. 
He ’s got a wife that *s as pure and good as gold, 
and he knows it, and she worships the ground he 
walks on, and he knows that too. And yet the 
scoundrel is around trying to sniff out some shadow 
of a pretext for misusing her worse than he ’s 
already done. Yes, sir ; he ’d be actually tickled 
to death if he could nose up some hint of a 
scandal about her, — something that he could pre- 
tend to believe, and work for his own advantagr 
407 ^ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


to levy blackmail, or get rid of her, or whatever 
suited his book. I did n’t think there was such an 
out-and-out cur on this whole footstool. I almost 
wish, by God, I ’d thrown him into the canal 1 ” 

“ Yes, you lawyers must run against some pretty 
snide specimens,” remarked the photographer, 
lifting one of the cases from its sockets. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


Theron spent half an hour in aimless strolling 
about the streets. From earliest boyhood his 
mind had always worked most clearly when he 
walked alone. Every mental process which had 
left a mark upon his memory and his career, — 
the day-dreams of future academic greatness and 
fame which had fashioned themselves in his brain 
as a farm lad ; the meditations, raptures, and high 
resolves of his student period at the seminary ; the 
more notable sermons and powerful discourses by 
which he had revealed the genius that was in 
him to astonished and delighted assemblages, — all 
were associated in his retrospective thoughts with 
solitary rambles. 

He had a very direct and vivid consciousness 
now that it was good to be on his legs, and alone. 
He had never in his life been more sensible of the 
charm of his own companionship. The encounter 
with Gorringe seemed to have cleared all the 
clouds out of his brain, and restored lightness to 
his heart. After such an object lesson, the impos- 
sibility of his continuing to sacrifice himself to a 
notion of duty to these low-minded and coarse- 
natured villagers was beyond all argument. There 
409 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


could no longer be any doubt about his moral 
right to turn his back upon them, to wash his 
hands of the miserable combination of hypocrisy 
and hysterics which they called their spiritua/ 
life. 

And the question of Gorringe and Alice, that 
too stood precisely where he wanted it. Even in 
his own thoughts, he preferred to pursue it no 
further. Between them somewhere an offence of 
concealment, it might be of conspiracy, had been 
committed against him. It was no business of his 
to say more, or to think more. He rested his case 
simply on the fact, which could not be denied, and 
which he was not in the least interested to have 
explained, one way or the other. The recollection 
of Gorringe’s obvious disturbance of mind was 
especially pleasant to him. He himself had been 
magnanimous almost to the point of weakness. 
He had gone out of his way to call the man 
“brother,” and to give him an opportunity of 
behaving like a gentleman; but his kindly for- 
bearance had been wasted. Gorringe was not the 
man to understand generous feelings, much less 
rise to their level. He had merely shown that he 
would be vicious if he knew how. It was more 
important and satisfactory to recall that he had 
also shown a complete comprehension of the 
injured husband’s grievance. The fact that he 
had recognized it was enough, — was, in fact, 
everything. 

,410 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


In the background of his thoughts Theron 
had carried along a notion of going and dining 
with Father Forbes when the time for the evening 
meal should arrive. The idea in itself attracted 
him, as a fitting capstone to his resolve not to go 
home to supper. It gave just the right kind of 
character to his domestic revolt. But when at last 
he stood on the doorstep of the pastorate, waiting 
for an answer to the tinkle of the electric bell he 
had heard ring inside, his mind contained only the 
single thought that now he should hear something 
about Celia. Perhaps he might even find her 
there ; but he put that suggestion aside as slightly 
unpleasant. 

The hag-faced housekeeper led him, as before, 
into the dining-room. It was still daylight, and 
he saw on the glance that the priest was alone at 
the table, with a book beside him to read from 
as he ate. 

Father Forbes rose and came forward, greeting 
his visitor with profuse urbanity and smiles. If 
there was a perfunctory note in the invitation to sit 
down and share the meal, Theron did not catch it. 
He frankly displayed his pleasure as he laid aside 
his hat, and took the chair opposite his host. 

“It is really only a few months since I was 
here, in this room, before,” he remarked, as the 
priest closed his book and tossed it to one side, 
and the housekeeper came in to lay another place. 
“ Yet it might have been years, many long years, 
4II„ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


so tremendous is the difference that the lapse of 
time has wrought in me.” 

"I am afraid we have nothing to tempt you 
very much, Mr. Ware,” remarked Father Forbes, 
with a gesture of his plump white hand which 
embraced the dishes in the centre of the 
table. “May I send you a bit of this boiled 
mutton? I have very homely tastes when I am 
by myself.” 

“ I was saying,” Theron observed, after some 
moments had passed in silence, " that I date such 
a tremendous revolution in my thoughts, my beliefs, 
my whole mind and character, from my first meet- 
ing with you, my first coming here. I don’t know 
how to describe to you the enormous change that 
has come over me ; and I owe it all to you.” 

“I can only hope, then, that it is entirely 
of a satisfactory nature,” said the priest, politely 
smiling. 

“ Oh, it is so splendidly satisfactory ! ” said 
Theron, with fervor. “I look back at myself 
now with wonder and pity. It seems incredible 
that, such a little while ago, I should have been 
such an ignorant and unimaginative clod of earth, 
content with such petty ambitions and actually 
proud of my limitations.” 

“ And you have larger ambitions now?” asked 
the other. “ Pray let me help you to some pota- 
toes. I am afraid that ambitions only get in our 
way and trip us up. We clergymen are like 
412 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


street-car horses. The more steadily we jog along 
between the rails, the better it is for us.” 

“ Oh, I don’t intend to remain in the ministry,” 
declared Theron. The statement seemed to him 
a little bald, now that he had made it ; and as his 
companion lifted his brows in surprise, he added 
stumblingly : “ That is, as I feel now, it seems to 
me impossible that I should remain much longer. 
With you, of course, it is different. You have a 
thousand things to interest and pleasantly occupy 
you in your work and its ceremonies, so that 
mere belief or non-belief in the dogma hardly 
matters. But in our church dogma is everything. 
If you take that away, or cease to have its support, 
the rest is intolerable, hideous.” 

Father Forbes cut another slice of mutton for 
himself. “ It is a pretty serious business to make 
such a change at your time of life. I take it for 
granted you will think it all over very carefully 
before you commit yourself.” He said this with 
an almost indifferent air, which rather chilled his 
listener’s enthusiasm. 

“Oh, yes,” Theron made answer; “I shall do 
nothing rash. But I have a good many plans for 
the future.” 

Father Forbes did not ask what these were, and 
a brief further period of silence fell upon the table. 

“ I hope everything went off smoothly at the 
picnic,” Theron ventured, at last. “I have not 
seen any of you since then.” 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


The priest shook his head and sighed. “ No,’* 
he said. “It is a bad business. I have had a 
great deal of unhappiness out of it this past fort- 
night. That young man who was rude to you — 
of course it was mere drunken, irresponsible non- 
sense on his part — has got himself into a serious 
scrape, I ’m afraid. It is being kept quite within 
the family, and we hope to manage so that it will 
remain there, but it has terribly upset his father 
and his sister. But that, after all, is not so hard to 
bear as the other affliction that has come upon the 
Maddens. You remember Michael, the other 
brother? He seems to have taken cold that 
evening, or perhaps over-excited himself. He has 
been seized with quick consumption. He will 
hardly last till snow flies.’* 

“ Oh, I am grieved to hear that ! ** Theron 
spoke with tremulous earnestness. It seemed to 
him as if Michael were in some way related to 
him. 

“ It is very hard upon them all,” the priest went 
on. “Michael is as sweet and holy a character 
as it is possible for any one to think of. He is 
the apple of his father’s eye. They were insepa- 
rable, those two. Do you know the father, Mr. 
Madden ? ” 

Theron shook his head. “ I think I have seen 
him,” he said. “ A small man, with gray 
whiskers.” 

“ A peasant,” said Father Forbes, “ but with a 

4*4 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


heart of gold. Poor man ! he has had little enough 
out of his riches. Ah, the West Coast people, 
what tragedies I have seen among them over here I 
They have rudimentary lung organizations, like a 
frog’s, to fit the mild, wet soft air they live in. 
The sharp air here kills them off like flies in a 
frost. Whole families go. I should think there 
are a dozen of old Jeremiah’s children in the cem- 
etery. If Michael could have passed his twenty- 
eighth year, there would have been hope for him, 
at least till his thirty-fifth. These pulmonary 
things seem to go by sevens, you know.” 

“I didn’t know,” said Theron. “It is very 
strange — and very sad.” His startled mind was 
busy, all at once, with conjectures as to Celia’s 
age. 

“ The sister — Miss Madden — seems extremely 
strong,” he remarked tentatively. 

“ Celia may escape the general doom,” said the 
priest. His guest noted that he clenched his 
shapely white hand on the table as he spoke, and 
that his gentle, carefully modulated voice had a 
gritty hardness in its tone. “ That would be too 
dreadful to think of,” he added. 

Theron shuddered in silence, and strove to shut 
his mind against the thought. 

“She has taken Michael’s illness so deeply to 
heart,” the priest proceeded, “ and devoted her- 
self to him so untiringly that I get a little nervous 
about her. I have been urging her to go away 
4i5 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

and get a change of air and scene, if only for a few 
days. She does not sleep well, and that is always 
a bad thing.” 

“ I think I remember her telling me once that 
sometimes she had sleepless spells,” said Theron. 
“ She said that then she banged on her piano at 
all hours, or dragged the cushions about from room 
to room, like a wild woman. A very interesting 
young lady, don’t you find her so? ” 

Father Forbes let a wan smile play on his lips. 
“What, our Celia?” he said. “Interesting! 
Why, Mr. Ware, there is no one like her in the 
world. She is as unique as — what shall I say ? — 
as the Irish are among races. Her father and 
mother were both born in mud-cabins, and she — 
she might be the daughter of a hundred kings, ex- 
cept that they seem mostly rather under-witted 
than otherwise. She always impresses me as a sort of 
atavistic idealization of the old Kelt at his finest and 
best. There in Ireland you got a strange mixture 
of elementary early peoples, walled off from the 
outer world by the four seas, and free to work out 
their own racial amalgam on their own lines. 
They brought with them at the outset a great in- 
heritance of Eastern mysticism. Others lost it, but 
the Irish, all alone on their island, kept it alive and 
brooded on it, and rooted their whole spiritual 
side in it. Theii religion is full of it ; their blood 
is full of it ; our Celia is fuller of it than anybody 
else. The Ireland of two thousand years ago is 
^ 416 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


incarnated in her. They are the merriest people and 
the saddest, the most turbulent and the most docile, 
the most talented and the most unproductive, the 
most practical and the most visionary, the most 
devout and the most pagan. These impossible 
contradictions war ceaselessly in their blood. 
When I look at Celia, I seem to see in my mind’s 
eye the fair young ancestral mother of them all.” 

Theron gazed at the speaker with open admira- 
tion. “ I love to hear you talk,” he said simply. 

An unbidden memory flitted upward in his 
mind. Those were the very words that Alice had 
so often on her lips in their old courtship days. 
How curious it was ! He looked at the priest, and 
had a quaint sensation of feeling as a romantic 
woman must feel in the presence of a specially 
impressive masculine personality. It was indeed 
strange that this soft-voiced, portly creature in a 
gown, with his white, fat hands and his feline suav- 
ity of manner, should produce such a commanding 
and unique effect of virility. No doubt this was a 
part of the great sex mystery which historically 
surrounded the figure of the celibate priest as with 
an atmosphere. Women had always been pros- 
trating themselves before it. Theron, watching his 
companion’s full, pallid face in the lamp-light, tried 
to fancy himself in the priest’s place, looking down 
upon these worshipping female forms. He won- 
dered what the celibate’s attitude really was. The 
enigma fascinated him. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

Father Forbes, after his rhetorical outburst, nad 
been eating. He pushed aside his cheese-plate, 
“I grow enthusiastic on the subject of my race 
sometimes,” he remarked, with the suggestion of 
an apology. “ But I make up for it other times — 
most of the time — by scolding them. If it were 
not such a noble thing to be an Irishman, it would 
be ridiculous.” 

“ Ah,” said Theron, deprecatingly, “ who would 
not be enthusiastic in talking of Miss Madden? 
What you said about her was perfect. As you 
spoke, I was thinking how proud and thankful we 
ought to be for the privilege of knowing her — we 
who do know her well — although of course your 
friendship with her is vastly more intimate than 
mine — than mine could ever hope to be.” 

The priest offered no comment, and Theron 
went on : “I hardly know how to describe the re- 
markable impression she makes upon me. I can’t 
imagine to myself any other young woman so bril- 
liant or broad in her views, or so courageous. Of 
course, her being so rich makes it easier for her to 
do just what she wants to do, but her bravery is 
astonishing all the same. We had a long and very 
sympathetic talk in the woods, that day of the pic- 
nic, after we left you. I don’t know whether she 
spoke to you about it ? ” 

Father Forbes made a movement of the head 
and eyes which seemed to negative the suggestion. 

“ Her talk,” continued Theron, “ gave me quite 
418 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


new ideas of the range and capacity of the female 
mind. I wonder that everybody in Octavius is n’t 
full of praise and admiration for her talents and 
exceptional character. In such a small town as 
this, you would think she would be the centre of 
attention, — the pride of the place.” 

“ I think she has as much praise as is good for 
her,” remarked the priest, quietly. 

“ And here ’s a thing that puzzles me,” pursued 
Mr. Ware. “ I was immensely surprised to find 
that Dr. Ledsmar does n’t even think she is smart, 
- — or at least he professes the utmost intellectual 
contempt for her, and says he dislikes her into the 
bargain. But of course she dislikes him, too, so 
that ’s only natural. But I can’t understand his 
denying her great ability.” 

The priest smiled in a dubious way. “Don’t 
borrow unnecessary alarm about that, Mr. Ware,” 
he said, with studied smoothness of modulated 
tones. “These two good friends of mine have 
much enjoyment out of the idea that they are fight- 
ing for the mastery over my poor unstable character. 
It has grown to be a habit with them, and a hobby 
as well, and they pursue it with tireless zest. There 
are not many intellectual diversions open to us 
here, and they make the most of this one. It 
amuses them, and it is not without its charms for 
me, in my capacity as an interested observer. It 
is a part of the game that they should pretend 
to themselves that they detest each other. In 
419 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

reality I fancy they like each other very much. 
At any rate, there is nothing to be disturbed 
about/’ 

His mellifluous tones had somehow the effect of 
suggesting to Theron that he was an outsider and 
would better mind his own business. Ah, if this 
purring pussy-cat of a priest only knew how little 
of an outsider he really was ! The thought gave 
him an easy self-control. 

“ Of course,” he said, “ our warm mutual friend- 
ship makes the observation of these little individual 
vagaries merely a part of a delightful whole. I 
should not dream of discussing Miss Madden’s con- 
fidences to me, or the doctor’s either, outside our 
own little group.” 

Father Forbes reached behind him and took 
from a chair his black three-cornered cap with the 
tassel. u Unfortunately I have a sick call waiting 
me,” he said, gathering up his gown and slowly 
rising. 

“Yes, I saw the man sitting in the hall,” re- 
marked Theron, getting to his feet. 

“ I would ask you to go upstairs and wait,” the 
priest went on, " but my return, unhappily, is quite 
uncertain. Another evening I may be more fortu- 
nate. I am leaving town to-morrow for some days, 
but when I get back — ” 

The polite sentence did not complete itself. 
Father Forbes had come out into the hall, giving a 
cool nod to the working-man, who rose from the 
420 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

bench as they passed, and shook hands with his 
guest on the doorstep. 

When the door had closed upon Mr. Ware, the 
priest turned to the man. “ You have come about 
those frames,” he said. “ If you will come upstairs, 
I will show you the prints, and you can give me a 
notion of what can be done with them. I rather 
fancy the idea of a triptych in carved old English, 
if you can manage it.” 

After the workman had gone away, Father Forbes 
put on slippers and an old loose soutane, lighted a 
cigar, and, pushing an easy-chair over to the reading 
lamp, sat down with a book. Then something 
occurred to him, and he touched the house-bell 
at his elbow. 

“ Maggie,” he said gently, when the housekeeper 
appeared at the door, “ I will have the coffee and 
fine champagne up here, if it is no trouble. And — 
oh, Maggie — I was compelled this evening to turn 
the blameless visit of the framemaker into a venial 
sin, and that involves a needless wear and tear of 
conscience. I think that — hereafter — you under- 
stand ? — I am not invariably at home when the 
Rev. Mr. Ware does me the honor to call.” 


CHAPTER XXVII 


That night brought the first frost of the season 
worth counting. In the morning, when Theron 
came downstairs, his casual glance through the 
window caught a desolate picture of blackened 
dahlia stalks and shrivelled blooms. The gayety 
and color of the garden were gone, and in their 
place was shabby and dishevelled ruin. He flung 
the sash up and leaned out. The nipping autumn 
air was good to breathe. He looked about him, 
surveying the havoc the frost had wrought among 
the flowers, and smiled. 

At breakfast he smiled again, — a mirthless and 
calculated smile. “ I see that Brother Gorringe’s 
flowers have come to grief over night,” he re- 
marked. 

Alice looked at him before she spoke, and saw 
on his face a confirmation of the hostile hint in 
his voice. She nodded in a constrained way, and 
said nothing. 

“ Or rather, I should say,” Theron went on, 
with deliberate words, “ the late Brother Gorringe’s 
flowers.” 

“How do you mean — late ? ” asked his wife, 
swiftly. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ Oh, calm yourself ! ” replied the husband. 
“ He is not dead. He has only intimated to me 
his desire to sever his connection. I may add 
that he did so in a highly offensive manner.” 

“ I am very sorry,” said Alice, in a low tone, 
and with her eyes on her plate. 

“ I took it for granted you would be grieved at 
his backsliding,” remarked Theron, making his 
phrases as pointed as he could. “ He was such a 
promising probationer, and you took such a keen 
interest in his spiritual awakening. But the frost 
has nipped his zeal, — along with the hundred or 
more dollars’ worth of flowers by which he testi- 
fied his faith. I find something interesting in their 
having been blasted simultaneously.” 

Alice dropped all pretence of interest in her 
breakfast. With a flushed face and lips tightly 
compressed, she made a movement as if to rise 
from her chair. Then, changing her mind, she 
sat bolt upright and faced her husband. 

“ I think we had better have this out right 
now,” she said, in a voice which Theron hardly 
recognized. “You have been hinting round the 
subject long enough, — too long. There are some 
things nobody is obliged to put up with, and this 
is one of them. You will oblige me by saying out 
in so many words what it is you are driving at.” 

The outburst astounded Theron. He laid down 
his knife and fork, and gazed at his wife in frank 
surprise. She had so accustomed him, of late, to 
4 2 3 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


a demeanor almost abject in its depressed docility 
that he had quite forgotten the Alice of the old 
days, when she had spirit and courage enough for 
two, and a notable tongue of her own. The flash 
in her eyes and the lines of resolution about her 
mouth and chin for a moment daunted him. 
Then he observed by a flutter of the frill at her 
wrist that she was trembling. 

“ I am sure I have nothing to * say out in so 
many words,* as you put it,” he replied, forcing 
his voice into cool, impassive tones. “ I merely 
commented upon a coincidence, that was all. If, 
for any reason under the sun, the subject chances 
to be unpleasant to you, I have no earthly desire 
to pursue it.** 

“ But I insist upon having it pursued ! ” returned 
Alice. " I *ve had just all I can stand of your 
insinuations and innuendoes, and it *s high time we 
had some plain talk. Ever since the revival, you 
have been dropping sly, underhand hints about 
Mr. Gorringe and — and me. Now I ask you 
what you mean by it.” 

Yes, there was a shake in her voice, and he 
could see how her bosom heaved in a tremor of 
nervousness. It was easy for him to be very calm. 

"It is you who introduce these astonishing 
suggestions, not I,” he replied coldly. “ It is you 
who couple your name with his, — somewhat to my 
surprise, I admit, — but let me suggest that we 
drop the subject. tom are excited just now, and 
4*4 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


you might say things that you would prefer to leave 
unsaid. It would surely be better for all concerned 
to say no more about it.” 

Alice, staring across the table at him with knitted 
brows, emitted a sharp little snort of indignation. 
“ Well, I never l Theron, I would n’t have thought 
it of you ! ” 

“ There are so many things you would n’t have 
thought, on such a variety of subjects,” he ob- 
served, with a show of resuming his breakfast. 
“ But why continue ? We are only angering each 
other.” 

“ Never mind that,” she replied, with more con- 
trol over her speech. “ I guess things have come 
to a pass where a little anger won’t do any harm. 
I have a right to insist on knowing what you mean 
by your insinuations.” 

Theron sighed. “Why will you keep harping 
on the thing ? ” he asked wearily. “ I have dis- 
played no curiosity. I don’t ask for any explana- 
tions. I think I mentioned that the man had 
behaved insultingly to me, — but that does n’t 
matter. I don’t bring it up as a grievance. I 
am very well able to take care of myself. I have 
no wish to recur to the incident in any way. So 
far as I am concerned, the topic is dismissed.” 

“ Listen to me ! ” broke in Alice, with eager 
gravity. She hesitated, as he looked up with a 
nod of attention, and reflected as well as she was 
able among her thoughts for a minute or two. 
425 - 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“This is what I want to say to you. Ever since 
we came to this hateful Octavius, you and I have 
been drifting apart, — or no, that does n’t express 
it, — simply rushing away from each other. It 
only began last spring, and now the space between 
us is so wide that we are worse than complete 
strangers. For strangers at least don’t hate each 
other, and I ’ve had a good many occasions lately 
to see that you positively do hate me — ” 

“ What grotesque absurdity !” interposed Theron, 
Impatiently. 

“ No, it is n’t absurdity ; it *s gospel truth,” re- 
torted Alice. “ And — don’t interrupt me — there 
have been times, too, when I have had to ask my- 
self if I was n’t getting almost to hate you in return. 
I tell you this frankly.” 

“ Yes, you are undoubtedly frank,” commented 
the husband, toying with his teaspoon. u A hyper- 
critical person might consider, almost too frank.” 

Alice scanned his face closely while he spoke, 
and held her breath as if in expectant suspense. 
Her countenance clouded once more. u You don’t 
realize, Theron,” she said gravely; “your voice 
when you speak to me, your look, your manner, 
they have all changed. You are like another man, 
— some man who never loved me, and doesn’t 
even know me, much less like me. I want to 
know what the end of it is to be. Up to the time 
of your sickness last summer, until after the 
Soulsbys went away, I did n’t let myself get down- 
426 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

right discouraged. It seemed too monstrous for 
belief that you should go away out of my life like 
that. It did n’t seem possible that God could 
allow such a thing. It came to me that I had 
been lax in my Christian life, especially in my 
position as a minister’s wife, and that this was my 
punishment. I went to the altar, to intercede with 
Him, and to try to loose my burden at His feet. 
But nothing has come of it. I got no help from 
you.” 

“ Really, Alice,” broke in Theron, “ I explained 
over and over again to you how preoccupied I was 
— with the book — and affairs generally.” 

“ I got no assistance from Heaven either,” she 
went on, declining the diversion he offered. “ I 
don’t want to talk impiously, but if there is a God, 
he has forgotten me, his poor heart-broken hand- 
maiden.” 

“You are talking impiously, Alice,” observed 
her husband. “And you are doing me cruel 
injustice, into the bargain.” 

“ I only wish I were ! ” she replied ; “ I only wish 
to God I were 1 ” 

“ Well, then, accept my complete assurance that 
you are, — that your whole conception of me, and 
of what you are pleased to describe as my change 
toward you, is an entire and utter mistake. Of 
course, the married state is no more exempt from 
the universal law of growth, development, alter- 
ation, than any other human institution. On its 
437 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


spiritual side, of course, viewed either as a sacra- 
ment, or as — ” 

“ Don’t let us go into that,” interposed Alice, 
abruptly. “ In fact, there is no good in talking 
any more at all. It is as if we did n’t speak the 
same language. You don’t understand what I 
say; it makes no impression upon your mind.” 

“ Quite to the contrary,” he assured her ; “ I 
have been deeply interested and concerned in 
all you have said. I think you are laboring 
under a great delusion, and I have tried my 
best to convince you of it; but I have never 
heard you speak more intelligibly or, I might say, 
effectively.” 

A little gleam of softness stole over Alice’s face. 
4t If you only gave me a little more credit for in- 
telligence,” she said, “you would find that I am 
not such a blockhead as you think I am.” 

u Come, come ! ” he said, with a smiling show of 
impatience. “ You really must n’t impute things 
to me wholesale, like that.” 

She was glad to answer the smile in kind. " No ; 
but truly,” she pleaded, “ you don’t vealize it, but 
you have grown into a way of treating me as if I 
had absolutely no mind at all.” 

“ You have a. very admirable mind,” he re- 
sponded, and took up his teaspoon again. She 
reached for his cup, and poured out hot coffee for 
him. An almost cheerful spirit had suddenly 
descended upon the breakfast table. 

428 _ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

“And now let me say the thing I have been 
aching to say for months,” she began, in r. less 
burdened voice. 

He lifted his brows. “ Have n*t things been 
discussed pretty fully already?” he asked. 

The doubtful, harassed expression clouded upon 
her face at his words, and she paused. “ No,” 
she said resolutely, after an instant’s reflection ; 
“ it is my duty to discuss this, too. It is a misun- 
derstanding all round. You remember + hat I told 
you Mr. Gorringe had given me some plants, which 
he got from some garden or other? ” 

“ If you really wish to go on with the subject — 
yes — I have a recollection of that particular false- 
hood of his.” 

“ He did it with the kindest and friendliest 
motives in the world ! ” protested Alice. “ He 
saw how down-in-the-mouth and moping I was 
here, among these strangers, — and I really was 
getting quite peaked and run-down, — and he said 
I stayed indoors too much, and it would do me all 
sorts of good to work in the garden, and he would 
send me some plants. The next I knew, here they 
were, with a book about mixing soils and planting, 
and so on. When I saw him next, and thanked 
him, I suppose I showed some apprehension about 
his having laid out money on them, and he, just to 
ease my mind, invented the story about his getting 
them for nothing. When I found out the truth — 
1 got it out of that boy, Harvey Semple — he ad- 
429 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


mitted it quite frankly, — said he was wrong to 
deceive me.” 

“This was in the fine first fervor of his term of 
probation, I suppose,” put in Theron. He made 
no effort to dissemble the sneer in his voice. 

“ Well,” answered Alice, with a touch of 
acerbity, “ I have told you now, and it is off my 
mind. There never would have been the slightest 
concealment about it, if you had n’t begun by 
keeping me at arm’s length, and making it next 
door to impossible to speak to you at all, and 
if — ” 

“ And if he had n’t lied.” Theron, as he finished 
her sentence for her, rose from the table. Dallying 
for a brief moment by his chair, there seemed the 
magnetic premonition in the air of some further 
and kindlier word. Then he turned and walked 
sedately into the next room, and closed the door 
behind him. The talk was finished ; and Alice, left 
alone, passed the knuckle of her thumb over one 
swimming eye and then the other, and bit her 
lips and swallowed down the sob that rose in 
her throat. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


It was early afternoon when Theron walked out 
of his yard, bestowing no glance upon the withered 
and tarnished show ox* the garden, and started with 
a definite step down the street. The tendency to 
ruminative loitering, which those who saw him 
abroad always associated with his tall, spare figure, 
was not suggested to-day. He moved forward 
like a man with a purpose. 

All the forenoon in the seclusion of the sitting- 
room, with a book opened before him, he had 
been thinking hard. It was not the talk with 
Alice that occupied his thoughts. That rose in 
his mind from time to time, only as a disagreeable 
blur, and he refused to dwell upon it. It was 
nothing to him, he said to himself, what Gorringe’s 
motives in lying had been. As for Alice, he hard- 
ened his heart against her. Just now it was her 
mood to try and make up to him. But it had 
been something different yesterday, and who could 
say what it would be to-morrow? He really had 
passed the limit of patience with her shifting 
emotional vagaries, now lurching in this direction, 
now in that. She had had her chance to main- 


431 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


tain a hold upon his interest and imagination, and 
had let it slip. These were the accidents of life, 
the inevitable harsh happenings in the great tragedy 
of Nature. They could not be helped, and there 
was nothing more to be said. 

He had bestowed much more attention upon 
what the priest had said the previous evening. He 
passed in review all the glowing tributes Father 
Forbes had paid to Celia. They warmed his 
senses as he recalled them, but they also, in a 
curious, indefinite way, caused him uneasiness. 
There had been a personal fervor about them 
which was something more than priestly. He 
remembered how the priest had turned pale and 
faltered when the question whether Celia would 
escape the general doom of her family came up. 
It was not a merely pastoral agitation that, he felt 
sure. 

A hundred obscure hints, doubts, stray little 
suspicions, crowded upward together in his thoughts. 
It became apparent to him now that from the out- 
set he had been conscious of something queer, — 
yes, from that very first day when he saw the 
priest and Celia together, and noted their glance 
of recognition inside the house of death. He 
realized now, upon reflection, that the tone of 
other people, his own parishioners and his casual 
acquaintances in Octavius alike, had always had 
a certain note of reservation in it when it touched 
upon Miss Madden. Her running in and out of 
432 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

the pastorate at all hours, the way the priest patted 
her on the shoulder before others, the obvious 
dislike the priest’s ugly old housekeeper bore her, 
the astonishing freedom of their talk with each 
other, — these dark memories loomed forth out of 
a mass of sinister conjecture. 

He could bear the uncertainty no longer. Was 
it indeed not entirely his own fault that it had 
existed thus long? No man with the spirit of a 
mouse would have shilly-shallied in this preposter- 
ous fashion, week after week, with the fever of a 
beautiful woman’s kiss in his blood, and the woman 
herself living only round the corner. The whole 
world had been as good as offered to him, — a 
bewildering world of wealth and beauty and spirit- 
ual exaltation and love, — and he, like a weak fool, 
had waited for it to be brought to him on a salver, 
as it were, and actually forced upon his acceptance ! 
“That is my failing,” he reflected; “these miser- 
able ecclesiastical bandages of mine have dwarfed 
my manly side. The meanest of Thurston’s clerks 
would have shown a more adventurous spirit and 
a bolder nerve. If I do not act at once, with 
courage and resolution, everything will be lost. 
Already she must think me unworthy of the honor 
it was in her sweet will to bestow.” Then he 
remembered that she was now always at home. 
“Not another hour of foolish indecision ! ” he 
whispered to himself. “ I will put my destiny to 
the test. I will see her to-day ! ” 

*8 433 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


A middle-aged, plain-faced servant answered his 
ring at the door-bell of the Madden mansion. She 
was palpably Irish, and looked at him with a 
saddened preoccupation in her gray eyes, holding 
the door only a little ajar. 

Theron had got out one of his cards. “ I wish 
to make inquiry about young Mr. Madden, — Mr. 
Michael Madden,” he said, holding the card forth 
tentatively. “ I have only just heard of his illness, 
and it has been a great grief to me.” 

“ He is no better,” answered the woman, briefly. 

“ I am the Rev. Mr. Ware,” he went on, “ and 
you may say that, if he is well enough, l should be 
glad to see him.” 

The servant peered out at him with a suddenly 
altered expression, then shook her head. “ I don’t 
think he would be wishing to see you ,” she replied. 
It was evident from her tone that she suspected 
the visitor’s intentions. 

Theron smiled in spite of himself. “ I have not 
come as a clergyman,” he explained, “ but as a 
friend of the family. If you will tell Miss Madden 
that I am here, it will do just as well. Yes, we 
won’t bother him. If you will kindly hand my 
card to his sister.” 

When the domestic turned at this and went in, 
Theron felt like throwing his hat in the air, there 
where he stood. The woman’s churlish sectarian 
prejudices had played ideally into his hands. In 
no other imaginable way could he have asked for 
434 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Celia so naturally. He wondered a little that a 
servant at such a grand house as this should leave 
callers standing on the doorstep. Still more he 
wondered what he should say to the lady of his 
dreams when he came into her presence. 

“ Will you please to walk this way ? ” The 
woman had returned. She closed the door noise- 
lessly behind him, and led the way, not up the sump- 
tuous staircase, as Theron had expected, but along 
through the broad hall, past several large doors, to 
a small curtained archway at the end. She pushed 
aside this curtain, and Theron found himself in a 
sort of conservatory, full of the hot, vague light 
of sunshine falling through ground-glass. The air 
was moist and close, and heavy with the smell of 
verdure and wet earth. A tall bank of palms, 
with ferns sprawling at their base, reared itself 
directly in front of him. The floor was of mosaic, 
and he saw now that there were rugs upon it, 
and that there were chairs and sofas, and other 
signs of habitation. It was, indeed, only half a 
greenhouse, for the lower part of it was in rose- 
wood panels, with floral paintings on them, like 
a room 

Moving to one side of the barrier of palms, he 
discovered, to his great surprise, the figure of 
Michael, sitting propped up with pillows in a huge 
easy-chair. The sick man was looking at him 
with big, gravely intent eyes. His face did not 
show as much change as Theron had in fancy 
435 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


pictured. It had seemed almost as bony and 
cadaverous on the day of the picnic. The hands 
spread out on the chair-arms were very white and 
thin, though, and the gaze in the blue eyes had a 
spectral quality which disturbed him. 

Michael raised his right hand, and Theron, step- 
ping forward, took it limply in his for an instant. 
Then he laid it down again. The touch of people 
about to die had always been repugnant to him. 
He could feel on his own warm palm the very 
damp of the grave. 

“ I only heard from Father Forbes last evening 
of your — your ill-health,” he said, somewhat 
hesitatingly. He seated himself on a bench 
beneath the palms, facing the invalid, but still 
holding his hat. “ I hope very sincerely that you 
will soon be all right again.” 

“ My sister is lying down in her room,” answered 
Michael. He had not once taken his sombre and 
embarrassing gaze from the other’s face. The 
voice in which he uttered this uncalled-for remark 
was thin in fibre, cold and impassive. It fell upon 
Theron’s ears with a suggestion of hidden meaning. 
Pie looked uneasily into Michael’s eyes, and then 
away again. They seemed to be looking straight 
through him, and there was no shirking the sensa- 
tion that they saw and comprehended things with 
an unnatural prescience. 

“ I hope she is feeling better,” Theron found 
himself saying. “ Father Forbes mentioned that 
43<> 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

she was a little under the weather. I dined with 
him last night.” 

“ I am glad that you came,” said Michael, after 
a little pause. His earnest, unblinking eyes seemed 
to supplement his tongue with speech of their own. 
u I do be thinking a great deal about you. I have 
matters to speak of to you, now that you are 
here.” 

Theron bowed his head gently, in token of 
grateful attention. He tried the experiment of 
looking away from Michael, but his glance went 
back again irresistibly, and fastened itself upon the 
sick man’s gaze, and clung there. 

“ I am next door to a dead man,” he went on, 
paying no heed to the other’s deprecatory gesture. 
“ It is not years or months with me, but weeks. 
Then I go away to stand up for judgment on my 
sins, and if it is His merciful will, I shall see God. 
So I say my good-byes now, and so you will let me 
speak plainly, and not think ill of what I say. You 
are much changed, Mr. Ware, since you came to 
Octavius, and it is not a change for the good.” 

Theron lifted his brows in unaffected surprise, 
and put inquiry into his glance. 

“ I don’t know if Protestants will be saved, in 
God’s good time, or not,” continued Michael. 
“ I find there are different opinions among the 
clergy about that, and of course it is not for me, 
only a plain mechanic, to be sure where learned 
and pious scholars are in doubt. But I am sure 
437 


THE DAMNATION OF tHEKON WARE 


about one thing. Those Protestants, and others 
too, mind you, who profess and preach good 
deeds, and themselves do bad deeds, — they will 
never be saved. They will have no chance at 
all to escape hell-fire." 

“ I think we are all agreed upon that, Mr. 
Madden," said Theron, with surface suavity. 

“Then I say to you, Mr. Ware, you are your- 
self in a bad path. Take the warning of a dying 
man, sir, and turn from it ! " 

The impulse to smile tugged at Theron’s facial 
muscles. This was really too droll. He looked 
up at the ceiling, the while he forced his counte- 
nance into a polite composure, then turned again 
to Michael, with some conciliatory commonplace 
ready for utterance. But he said nothing, and all 
suggestion of levity left his mind, under the search- 
ing inspection bent upon him by the young man’s 
hollow eyes. What did Michael suspect? What 
did he know? What was he hinting at, in this 
strange talk of his ? 

“ I saw you often on the street when first you 
came here," continued Michael. “ I knew the man 
who was here before you, — that is, by sight, — 
and he was not a good man. But your face, when 
you came, pleased me. I liked to look at you. 
I was tormented just then, do you see, that so 
many decent, kindly people, old school-mates and 
friends and neighbors of mine, — and, for that 
matter, others all over the country — must lose 
43 & 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


their souls because they were Protestants. All my 
boyhood and young manhood, that thought took 
the joy out of me. Sometimes I use n’t to sleep 
a whole night long, for thinking that some lad I 
had been playing with, perhaps in his own house, 
that very day, would be taken when he died, and 
his mother too, when she died, and thrown into 
the flames of hell for all eternity. It made me 
so unhappy that finally I wouldn’t go to any 
Protestant boy’s house, and have his mother be 
nice to me, and give me cake and apples, — and me 
thinking all the while that they were bound to be 
damned, no matter how good they were to me.” 

The primitive humanity of this touched Theron, 
and he nodded approbation with a tender smile in 
his eyes, forgetting for the moment that a per- 
sonal application of the monologue had been 
hinted at. 

“ But then later, as I grew up,” the sick man 
went on, “ I learned that it was not altogethei 
certain. Some of the authorities, I found, main- 
tained that it was doubtful, and some said openly 
that there must be salvation possible for good 
people who lived in ignorance of the truth 
through no fault of their own. Then I had hope 
one day, and no hope the next, and as I did my 
work I thought it over, and in the evenings my 
father and I talked it over, and we settled nothing 
of it at all. Of course, how could we ? ” 

“ Did you ever discuss the question with your 
439 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


sister? ” it occurred suddenly + o Theron to inter- 
pose. He was conscious of some daring in doing 
so, and he fancied that Michael’s drawn face 
clouded a little at his words. 

“ My sister is no theologian,” he answered 
briefly. “ Women have no call to meddle with such 
matters. But I was saying — it was in the middle 
of these doubtings of mine that you came here to 
Octavius, and I noticed you on the streets, and 
once in the evening — I made no secret of it to 
my people — I sat in the back of your church and 
heard you preach. As I say, I liked you. It was 
your face, and what I thought it showed of the 
man underneath it, that helped settle my mind 
more than anything else. I said to myself : 
* Here is a young man, only about my own age, 
and he has education and talents, and he does not 
seek to make money for himself, or a great name, 
but he is content to live humbly on the salary of a 
book-keeper, and devote all his time to prayer and 
the meditation of his religion, and preaching, and 
visiting the sick and the poor, and comforting 
them. His very face is a pleasure and a help for 
those in suffering and trouble to look at. The 
very sight of it makes one believe in pure thoughts 
and merciful deeds. I will not credit it that God 
intends damning such a man as that, or any like 
him ! • ” 

Theron bowed, with a slow, hesitating gravity of 
manner, and deep, not wholly complacent, attention 
449 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

on his face. Evidently all this was by way of prep- 
aration for something unpleasant. 

“ That was only last spring,” said Michael. His 
tired voice sank for a sentence or two into a medi- 
tative half-whisper. “And it was my last spring of 
all. I shall not be growing weak any more, or 
drawing hard breaths, when the first warm weather 
comes. It will be one season to me hereafter, al- 
ways the same.” He lifted his voice with percep- 
tible effort. “ I am talking too much. The rest I 
can say in a word. Only half a year has gone by, 
and you have another face on you entirely. I had 
noticed the small changes before, one by one. I 
saw the great change, all of a sudden, the day of 
the picnic. I see it a hundred times more now, as 
you sit there. If it seemed to me like the face of 
a saint before, it is more like the face of a bar- 
keeper now ! ” 

This was quite too much. Theron rose, flushed 
to the temples, and scowled down at the helpless 
man in the chair. He swallowed the sharp words 
which came uppermost, and bit and moistened his 
lips as he forced himself to remember that this was 
a dying man, and Celia’s brother, to whom she was 
devoted, and whom he himself felt he wanted to be 
very fond of. He got the shadow of a smile on to 
his countenance. 

“ I fear you have tired yourself unduly/* he said, 
in as non-contentious a tone as he could manage. 
He even contrived a little deprecatory laugh. “I 
441 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


am afraid your real quarrel is with the air of Octa- 
vius. It agrees with me so wonderfully, — I am 
getting as fat as a seal. But I do hope I am not 
paying for it by such a wholesale deterioration in- 
side. If my own opinion could be of any value, I 
should assure you that I feel myself an infinitely 
better and broader and stronger man than I was 
when I came here.” 

Michael shook his head dogmatically. “ That is 
the greatest pity of all,” he said, with renewed earn- 
estness. “ You are entirely deceived about your- 
self. You do not at all realize how you have altered 
your direction, or where you are going. It was a 
great misfortune for you, sir, that you did not keep 
among your own people. That poor half-brother 
of mine, though the drink was in him when he said 
that same to you, never spoke a truer word. Keep 
among your own people, Mr. Ware ! When you go 
among others — you know what I mean — you have 
no proper understanding of what their sayings and 
doings really mean. You do not realize that they 
are held up by the power of the true Church, as a 
little child learning to walk is held up with a belt 
by its nurse. They can say and do things, and no 
harm at all come to them, which would mean de- 
struction to you, because they have help, and you 
are walking alone. And so be said by me, Mr. 
Ware ! Go back to the way you were brought up 
in, and leave alone the people whose ways are 
different from yours. You are a married man, and 
442 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


you are the preacher of a religion, such as it is. 
There can be nothing better for you than to go and 
strive to be a good husband, and to set a good 
example to the people of your Church, who look up 
to you — and mix yourself up no more with outside 
people and outside notions that only do you mis- 
chief. And that is what I wanted to say to you.” 

Theron took up his hat. “ I take in all kindness 
what you have felt it your duty to say to me, Mr. 
Madden,” he said. “ I am not sure that I have 
altogether followed you, but I am very sure you 
mean it well.” 

“ I mean well by you,” replied Michael, wearily 
moving his head on the pillow, and speaking in an 
undertone of languor and pain, “ and I mean well 
by others, that are nearer to me, and that I have a 
right to care more about. When a man lies by the 
side of his open grave, he does not be meaning ill 
to any human soul.” 

“ Yes — thanks — quite so ! ” faltered Theron. 
He dallied for an instant with the temptation to 
seek some further explanation, but the sight of 
Michael’s half-closed eyes and worn-out expression 
decided him against it. It did not seem to be 
expected, either, that he should shake hands, and 
with a few perfunctory words of hope for the in* 
valid’s recovery, which fell with a jarring note of 
falsehood upon his own ears, he turned and left the 
room. As he did so, Michael touched a bell on 
the table beside him. 


443., 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Theron drew a long breath in the hall, as the 
curtain fell behind him. It was an immense relief 
to escape from the oppressive humidity and heat of 
the flower-room, and from that ridiculous bore of 
a Michael as well. 

The middle-aged, grave-faced servant, warned by 
the bell, stood waiting to conduct him to the door. 

“ I am sorry to have missed Miss Madden,” he 
said to her. “ She must be quite worn out. Per- 
haps later in the day — ” 

“ She will not be seeing anybody to-day,” re- 
turned the woman. “ She is going to New York 
this evening, and she is taking some rest against 
the journey.” 

“ Will she be away long?” he asked mechani- 
cally. The servant’s answer, “ I have no idea,” 
hardly penetrated his consciousness at all. 

He moved down the steps, and along the gravel 
to the street, in a maze of mental confusion. When 
he reached the sidewalk, under the familiar elms, 
he paused, and made a definite effort to pull his 
thoughts together, and take stock of what had 
happened, of what was going to happen ; but the 
thing baffled him. It was as if some drug had 
stupefied his faculties. 

He began to walk, and gradually saw that what 
he was thinking about was the fact of Celia’s de- 
parture for New York that evening. He stared at 
this fact, at first in its nakedness, then clothed with 
reassuring suggestions that this was no doubt a trip 
444 ^ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


she very often made. There was a blind sense of 
comfort in this idea, and he rested himself upon it. 
Yes, of course, she travelled a great deal. New 
York must be as familiar to her as Octavius was to 
him. Her going there now was quite a matter of 
course, — the most natural thing in the world. 

Then there burst suddenly uppermost in his 
mind the other fact, — that Father Forbes was also 
going to New York that evening. The two things 
spindled upward, side by side, yet separately, in his 
mental vision ; then they twisted and twined 
themselves together. He followed their convolu- 
tions miserably, walking as if his eyes were shut. 

In slow fashion matters defined and arranged 
themselves before him. The process of tracing 
their sequence was all torture, but there was no 
possibility, no notion, of shirking any detail of the 
pain. The priest had spoken of his efforts to per- 
suade Celia to go away for a few days, for rest and 
change of air and scene. He must have known 
only too well that she was going, but of that he 
had been careful to drop no hint. The possibility 
of accident was too slight to be worth considering. 
People on such intimate terms as Celia and the 
priest — people with such facilities for seeing each 
other whenever they desired — did not find them- 
selves on the same train of cars, with the same 
long journey in view, by mere chance. 

Theron walked until dusk began to close in 
upon the autumn day. It grew colder, as he 
445 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


turned his face homeward. He wondered if it 
would freeze again over-night, and then remem- 
bered the shrivelled flowers in his wife’s garden. 
For a moment they shaped themselves in a picture 
before his mind’s eye ; he saw their blackened 
foliage, their sickbed, drooping stalks, and wilted 
blooms, and as he looked, they restored themselves 
to the vigor and grace and richness of color of 
summer-time, as vividly as if they had been painted 
on a canvas. Or no, the picture he stared at was 
not on canvas, but on the glossy, varnished panel 
of a luxurious sleeping-car. He shook his head 
angrily and blinked his eyes again and again, to 
prevent their seeing, seated together in the open 
window above this panel, the two people he knew 
were there, gloved and habited for the night’s 
journey, waiting for the train to start. 

• *•••••• 

“ Very much to my surprise,” he found himself 
saying to Alice, watching her nervously as she laid 
the supper-table, “ I find I must go to Albany to- 
night. That is, it isn’t absolutely necessary, for 
that matter, but I think it may easily turn out to 
be greatly to my advantage to go. Something has 
arisen — I can’t speak about it as yet — but the 
sooner I see the Bishop about it the better. 
Things like that occur in a man’s life, where 
boldly striking out a line of action, and following 
it up without an instant’s delay, may make all 
the difference in the world to him. To-morrow 
446 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


it might be too late ; and, besides, I can be home 
the sooner again.” 

Alice’s face showed surprise, but no trace of 
suspicion. She spoke with studied amiability dur- 
ing the meal, and deferred with such unexpected 
tact to his implied desire not to be questioned as 
to the mysterious motives of the journey, that his 
mood instinctively softened and warmed toward 
her, as they finished supper. 

He smiled a little. “ I do hope I sha’n’t have 
to go on to-morrow to New York; but these 
Bishops of ours are such gad-abouts one never 
knows where to catch them. As like as not 
Sanderson may be down in New York, on Book- 
Concern business or something; and if he is, I 
shall have to chase him up. But, after all, perhaps 
the trip will do me good, — the change of air and 
scene, you know.” 

“I’m sure I hope so,” said Alice, honestly 
enough. “ If you do go on to New York, I sup- 
pose you ’ll go by the river- boat. Everybody talks 
so much of that beautiful sail down the Hudson.” 

“ That ’s an idea ! ” exclaimed Theron, welcom - 
ing it with enthusiasm. “It hadn’t occurred to 
me. If I do have to go, and it is as lovely as they 
make out, the next time I promise I won’t go with- 
out you, my girl. I have been rather out of sorts 
lately,” he continued. “When I come back, I 
daresay I shall be feeling better, more like my old 
self. Then I ’m going to try, Alice, to be nicer to 
4 4 ? 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


you than I have been of late. I ’m afraid there 
was only too much truth in what you said this 
morning.” 

“ Never mind what I said this morning — or any 
other time,” broke in Alice, softly. “ Don’t eve* 
remember it again, Theron, if only — only — ” 

He rose as she spoke, moved round the table to 
where she sat, and, bending over her, stopped the 
faltering sentence with a kiss. When was it, he 
wondered, that he had last kissed her? It seemed 
years, ages, ago. 

An hour later, with hat and overcoat on, and his 
valise in his hand, he stood on the doorstep of the 
parsonage, and kissed her once more before he 
turned and descended into the darkness. He felt 
like whistling as his feet sounded firmly on the 
plank sidewalk beyond the gate. It seemed as if 
he had never been in such capital good spirits 
before in his life. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


The train was at a standstill somewhere, and the 
dull, ashen beginnings of daylight had made a first 
feeble start toward effacing the lamps in the car- roof, 
when the new day opened for Theron. A man who 
had just come in stopped at the seat upon which he 
had been stretched through the night, and, tapping 
him brusquely on the knee, said, “ I ’m afraid I 
must trouble you, sir.” After a moment of sleep- 
burdened confusion, he sat up, and the man took 
the other half of the seat and opened a newspaper, 
still damp from the press. It was morning, then. 

Theron rubbed a clear space upon the clouded 
window with his thumb, and looked out. There 
was nothing to be seen but a broad stretch of 
tracks, and beyond this the shadowed outlines of 
wagons and machinery in a yard, with a back- 
ground of factory buildings. 

The atmosphere in the car was vile beyond 
belief. He thought of opening the window, but 
feared that the peremptory-looking man with the 
paper, who had wakened him and made him sit 
up, might object. They were the only people in 
the car who were sitting up. Backwards and for- 
wards, on either side of the narrow aisle, the dim 
3 9 442 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


light disclosed recumbent forms, curled uncomfort- 
ably into comers, or sprawling at difficult angles 
which involved the least interference with one 
another. Here and there an upturned face gave a 
livid patch of surface for the mingled play of the 
gray dawn and the yellow lamp -light. A ceaseless 
noise of snoring was in the air. 

He got up and walked to the tank of ice-water 
at the end of the aisle, and took a drink from the 
most inaccessible portion of the common tin-cup ? s 
rim. The happy idea of going out on the platform 
struck him, and he acted upon it. The morning 
air was deliciously cool and fresh by contrast, and 
he filled his lungs with it again and again. Stand- 
ing here, he could discern beyond the buildings to 
the right the faint purplish outlines of great 
rounded hills. Some workmen, one of them bear- 
ing a torch, were crouching along under the side 
of the train, pounding upon the resonant wheels 
with small hammers. He recalled having heard 
the same sound in the watches of the night, during 
a prolonged halt. Some one had said it was Al- 
bany. He smiled in spite of himself at the thought 
that Bishop Sanderson would never know about 
the visit he had missed. 

Swinging himself to the ground, he bent side- 
wise and looked forward down the long train. 
There were five, six, perhaps more, sleeping-cars 
on in front. Which one of them, he wondered — • 
and then there came the sharp “ All aboard ! r 
45 ° - 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


from the other side, and he bundled up the steps 
again, and entered the car as the train slowly 
resumed its progress. 

He was wide-awake now, and quite at his ease. 
He took his seat, and diverted himself by winking 
gravely at a little child facing him on the next seat 
but one. There were four other children in the 
family party, encamped about the tired and still 
sleeping mother whose back was turned to Theron. 
He recalled now having noticed this poor woman 
last night, in the first stage of his journey, — how she 
fed her brood from one of the numerous baskets 
piled under their feet, and brought water in a tin 
dish of her own from the tank to use in washing 
their faces with a rag, and loosened their clothes 
to dispose them for the night’s sleep. The face of 
the woman, her manner and slatternly aspect, and 
the general effect of her belongings, bespoke 
squalid ignorance and poverty. Watching her, 
Theron had felt curiously interested in the per- 
formance. In one sense, it was scarcely more 
human than the spectacle of a cat licking her 
kittens, or a cow giving suck to her calf. Yet, 
in another, was there anything more human? 

The child who had wakened before the rest re- 
garded him with placidity, declining to be amused 
by his winkings, but exhibiting no other emotion. 
She had been playing by herself with a couple of 
buttons tied on a string, and after giving a civil 
amount of attention to Theron’s grimaces, she 
45 1 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


turned again to the superior attractions of this toy. 
Her self-possession, her capacity for self- entertain- 
ment, the care she took not to arouse the others, 
all impressed him very much. He felt in his 
pocket for a small coin, and, reaching forward, 
offered it to her. She took it calmly, bestowed a 
tranquil gaze upon him for a moment, and went 
back to the buttons. Her indifference produced 
an unpleasant sensation upon him somehow, and 
he rubbed the steaming window clear again, and 
stared out of it. 

The wide river lay before him, flanked by a pre- 
cipitous wall of cliffs which he knew instantly roust 
be the Palisades. There was an advertisement 
painted on them which he tried in vain to read. 
He was surprised to find they interested him so 
slightly. He had heard all his life of the Hudson, 
and especially of it just at this point. The reality 
seemed to him almost commonplace. His failure 
to be thrilled depressed him for the moment. 

“ I suppose those are the Palisades? ” he asked 
his neighbor. 

The man glanced up from his paper, nodded, 
and made as if to resume his reading. But his 
eye had caught something in the prospect through 
the window which arrested his attention. “ By 
George ! ” he exclaimed, and lifted himself to get 
a clearer view. 

“ What is it ? ” asked Theron, peering forth as 
well. 


452 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


u Nothing ; only Barclay Wendover’s yacht is 
still there. There ’s been a hitch of some sort. 
They were to have left yesterday.” 

“ Is that it, — that long black thing? ” queried 
Theron. “ That can’t be a yacht, can it? ” 

“ What do you think it is?” answered the 
other. They were looking at a slim, narrow hull, 
lying at anchor, silent and motionless on the drab 
expanse of water. “ If that ain’t a yacht, they 
have n’t begun building any yet. They ’re taking 
her over to the Mediterranean for a cruise, you 
know, — around India and Japan for the winter, 
and home by the South Sea islands. Friend o’ 
mine’s in the party. Wouldn’t mind the trip 
myself.” 

“ But do you mean to say,” asked Theron, 
“that that little shell of a thing can sail across 
the ocean? Why, how many people would she 
hold?” 

The man laughed. “ Well,” he said, “ there ’s 
room for two sets of quadrilles in the chief saloon, 
if the rest keep their legs well up on the sofas. 
But there ’s only ten or a dozen in the party this 
time. More than that rather get in one another’s 
way, especially with so many ladies on board.” 

Theron asked no more questions, but bent his 
head to see the last of this wonderful craft. The 
sight of it, and what he had heard about it, sud- 
denly gave point and focus to his thoughts. He 
knew at last what it was that had lurked, formless 
45 3 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


and undesignated, these many days in the back- 
ground of his dreams. The picture rose in his 
mind now of Celia as the mistress of a yacht. 
He could see her reclining in a low easy-chair 
upon the polished deck, with the big white sails 
billowing behind her, and the sun shining upon 
the deep blue waves, and glistening through the 
splash of spray in the air, and weaving a halo 
o r glowing gold about her fair head. Ah, how 
the tender visions crowded now upon him ! 
Eternal summer basked round this enchanted yacht 
of his fancy, — summer sought now in Scottish 
firths or Norwegian fiords, now in quaint old 
Southern harbors, ablaze with the hues of strange 
costumes and half- tropical flowers and fruits, now 
in far-away Oriental bays and lagoons, or among 
the coral reefs and palm-trees of the luxurious 
Pacific. He dwelt upon these new imaginings with 
the fervent longing of an inland-born boy. Every 
vague yearning he had ever felt toward salt-water 
stirred again in his blood at the thought of the 
sea — with Celia. 

Why not? She had never visited any foreign 
land. “ Sometime,” she had said, “ sometime, no 
doubt I will.” He could hear again the wistful, 
musing tone of her voice. The thought had fas- 
cinations for her, it was clear. How irresistibly 
would it not appeal to her, presented with the 
added charm of a roving, vagrant independence 
on the high seas, free to speed in her snow-winged 
-454 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


chariot wherever she willed over the deep, loitering 
in this place, or up-helm-and-away to another, with 
no more care or weight of responsibility than the 
gulls tossing through the air in he‘r wake ! 

Theron felt, rather than phrased to himself, that 
there would not be “ ten or a dozen in the party” 
on that yacht. Without defining anything in his 
mind, he breathed in fancy the same bold ocean 
breeze which filled the sails, and toyed with Celia’s 
hair ; he looked with her as she sat by the rail, 
and saw the same waves racing past, the same vast 
dome of cloud and ether that were mirrored in 
her brown eyes, and there was no one else any- 
where near them. Even the men in sailors’ 
clothes, who would be pulling at ropes, or climbing 
up tarred ladders, kept themselves considerately 
outside the picture. Only Celia sat there, and at 
her feet, gazing up again into her face as in the 
forest, the man whose whole being had been 
consecrated to her service, her worship, by the 
kiss. 

“ You ’ve passed it now. I was trying to point 
out the Jumel house to you, — where Aaron Burr 
lived, you know.” 

Theron roused himself from his day-dream, and 
nodded with a confused smile at his neighbor. 
“ Thanks,” he faltered ; “ I didn’t hear you. The 
train makes such a noise, and I must have been 
dozing.” 

He looked about him. The night aspect, as of 

455 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


a tramps’ lodging house, had quite disappeared 
from the car. Everybody was sitting up ; and the 
more impatient were beginning to collect their 
bundles and hand-bags from the racks and floor. 
An expressman came through, jangling a huge 
bunch of brass checks on leathern thongs over his 
arm, and held parley with passengers along the 
aisle. Outside, citified streets, with stores and 
factories, were alternating in the moving panorama 
with open fields; and, even as he looked, these 
vacant spaces ceased altogether, and successive 
regular lines of pavement, between two tall rows of 
houses all alike, began to stretch out, wheel to the 
right, and swing off out of view, for all the world 
like the avenues of hop-poles he remembered as a 
boy. Then was a long tunnel, its darkness broken 
at stated intervals by brief bursts of daylight from 
overhead, and out of this all at once the train 
drew up its full length in some vast, vaguely lighted 
enclosure, and stopped. 

“Yes, this is New York,” said the man, folding 
up his paper, and springing to his feet. The 
narrow aisle was filled with many others who had 
been prompter still; and Theron stood, bag in 
hand, waiting till this energetic throng should have 
pushed itself bodily past him forth from the car. 
Then he himself made his way out, drifting with 
a sense of helplessness in their resolute wake. 
There rose in his mind the sudden conviction that 
he would be too late. All the passengers in the 
456 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


forward sleepers would be gone before he couk 
get there. Yet even this terror gave him no new 
power to get ahead of anybody else in the tightly 
packed throng. 

Once on the broad platform, the others started 
off briskly ; they all seemed to know just where 
they wanted to go, and to feel that no instant of 
time was to be lost in getting there. Theron 
himself caught some of this urgent spirit, and 
hurled himself along in the throng with reckless 
haste, knocking his bag against peoples’ legs, but 
never pausing for apology or comment until he 
found himself abreast of the locomotive at the 
head of the train. He drew aside from the main 
current here, and began searching the platform, 
far and near, for those he had travelled so far 
to find. 

The platform emptied itself. Theron lingered 
on in puzzled hesitation, and looked about him. 
In the whole immense station, with its acres of 
tracks and footways, and its incessantly shifting 
processions of people, there was visible nobody 
else who seemed also in doubt, or who appeared 
capable of sympathizing with indecision in any 
form. Another train came in, some way over to 
the right, and before it had fairly stopped, swarms 
of eager men began boiling out of each end of 
each car, literally precipitating themselves over one 
another, it seemed to Theron, in their excited 
dash down the steps. As they caught their foot- 
457 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ing below, they started racing pell-mell down the 
platform to its end ; there he saw them, looking 
more than ever like clustered bees in the dis- 
tance, struggling vehemently in a dense mass up a 
staircase in the remote corner of the building. 

“ What are those folks running for ? Is there a 
fire?” he asked an amiable-faced young mulatto, 
in the uniform of the sleeping-car service, who 
passed him with some light hand-bags. 

“ No ; they ’s Harlem people, I guess — jes’ 
catchin’ the Elevated — that ’s all, sir,” he an- 
swered obligingly. 

At the moment some passengers emerged slowly 
from one of the sleeping-cars, and came loitering 
toward him. 

“Why, are there people still in these cars?” he 
asked eagerly. “ Have n’t they all gone ? ” 

“ Some has ; some ain’t,” the porter replied. 
“ They most generally take their time about it. 
They ain’t no hurry, so long ’s they get out ’fore 
we ’re drawn round to the drill-yard.” 

There was still hope, then. Theron took up 
his bag and walked forward, intent upon finding 
some place from which he could watch unobserved 
the belated stragglers issuing from the sleeping- 
cars. He started back all at once, confronted by 
a semi-circle of violent men with whips and 
badges, who stunned his hearing by a sudden vocif- 
erous outburst of shouts and yells. They made 
furious gestures at him with their whips and fist$ 

458 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


to enforce the incoherent babel of their voices; 
and in these gestures, as in their faces and cries, 
there seemed a great deal of menace and very 
little invitation. There was a big policeman 
sauntering near by, and Theron got the idea that 
it was his presence alone which protected him from 
open violence at the hands of these savage hack- 
men. He tightened his clutch on his valise, and, 
turning his back on them and their uproar, tried 
to brave it out and stand where he was. But the 
policeman came lounging slowly toward him, with 
such authority in his swaying gait, and such urban 
omniscience written all over his broad, sandy face, 
that he lost heart, and beat an abrupt retreat off to 
the right, where there were a number of doorways, 
near which other people had ventured to put down 
baggage on the floor. 

Here, somewhat screened from observation, he 
stood for a long time, watching at odd moments 
the ceaselessly varying phases of the strange scene 
about him, but always keeping an eye on the train 
he had himself arrived in. It was slow and dis- 
piriting work. A dozen times his heart failed him, 
and he said to himself mournfully that he had had 
his journey for nothing. Then some new figure 
would appear, alighting from the steps of a sleeper, 
and hope revived in his breast. 

At last, when over half an hour of expectancy 
had been marked off by the big clock overhead, 
his suspense came to an end. He saw Fathei 
459 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Forbes’ erect and substantial form, standing on the 
car platform nearest of all, balancing himself with 
his white hands on the rails, waiting for something. 
Then after a little he came down, followed by a 
black porter, whose arms were burdened by nu- 
merous bags and parcels. The two stood a minute 
or so more in hesitation at the side of the steps. 
Then Celia descended, and the three advanced. 

The importance of not being discovered was 
uppermost in Theron’s mind, now that he saw 
them actually coming toward him. He had avoided 
this the previous evening, in the Octavius depot, 
with some skill, he flattered himself. It gave him 
a pleasurable sense of being a man of affairs, 
almost a detective, to be confronted by the neces- 
sity now of baffling observation once again. He 
was still rather without plans for keeping them in 
view, once they left the station. He had supposed 
that he would be able to hear what hotel they di- 
rected their driver to take them to, and, failing 
that, he had fostered a notion, based upon a story 
he had read when a boy, of throwing himself into 
another carriage, and bidding his driver to pursue 
them in hot haste, and on his life not fail to 
track them down. These devices seemed some- 
what empty, now that the urgent moment was at 
hand ; and as he drew back behind some other 
loiterers, out of view, he sharply racked his wits 
for some way of coping with this most pressing 
problem. 


460 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


It turned out, however, that there was no diffi- 
culty at all. Father Forbes and Celia seemed to 
have no use for the hackmen, but moved straight 
forward toward the street, through the doorway 
next to that in which Theron cowered. He stole 
round, and followed them at a safe distance, mak- 
ing Celia’s hat, and the portmanteau perched on 
the shoulder of the porter behind her, his guides. 
To his surprise, they still kept on their course 
when they had reached the sidewalk, and went over ' 
the pavement across an open square which spread 
itself directly in front of the station. Hanging as 
far behind as he dared, he saw them pass to the 
other sidewalk diagonally opposite, proceed for a 
block or so along this, and then separate at a cor- 
ner. Celia and the negro lad went down a side 
street, and entered the door of a vast, tall red- 
brick building which occupied the whole block. 
The priest, turning on his heel, came back again 
and went boldly up the broad steps of the front 
entrance to this same structure, which Theron now 
discovered to be the Murray Hill Hotel. 

Fortune had indeed favored him. He not only 
knew where they were, but he had been himself a 
witness to the furtive way in which they entered 
the house by different doors. Nothing in his own 
limited experience of hotels helped him to com- 
prehend the notion of a separate entrance for 
ladies and their luggage. He did not feel quite 
sure about the significance of what he had observed, 
461, 


the: damnation of theron ware 


in his own mind. But it was apparent to him 
that there was something underhanded about it. 

After lingering awhile on the steps of the hotel, .! 
and satisfying himself by peeps through the glass 
doors that the coast was clear, he ventured inside. 
The great corridor contained many people, coming, 
going, or standing about, but none of them paid 
any attention to him. At last he made up his 
mind, and beckoned a colored boy to him from a 
group gathered in the shadows of the big central 
staircase. Explaining that he did not at that mo- 
ment wish a room, but desired to leave his bag, the 
boy took him to a cloak-room, and got him a check 
for the thing. With this in his pocket he felt 
himself more at his ease, and turned to walk 
away. Then suddenly he wheeled, and, bend- 
ing his body over the counter of the cloak-room, 
astonished the attendant inside by the eager- 
ness with which he scrutinized the piled rows of 
portmanteaus, trunks, overcoats, and bundles in 
the little enclosure. 

" What is it you want? Here ’s your bag, if 
you ’re looking for that,” this man said to him. 

“ No, thanks; it’s nothing,” replied Theron, 
straightening himself again. He had had a narrow 
escape. Father Forbes and Celia, walking side by 
side, had come down the small passage in which 
he stood, and had passed him so closely that he 
had felt her dress brush against him. Fortunately 
he had seen them in time, and by throwing himself 
462 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

half into the cloak-room, had rendered recognition 
impossible. 

He walked now in the direction they had taken, 
till he came to the polite colored man at an open 
door on the left, who was bowing people into the 
breakfast room. Standing in the doorway, he 
looked about him till his eye lighted upon his two 
friends, seated at a small table by a distant window, 
with a black waiter, card in hand, bending over in 
consultation with them. 

Returning to the corridor, he made bold now to 
march up to the desk and examine the register. 
The priest’s name was not there. He found only 
the brief entry, “ Miss Madden, Octavius,” written, 
not by her, but by Father Forbes. On the line 
were two numbers in pencil, with an “ and ” be- 
tween them. An indirect question to one of the 
clerks helped him to an explanation of this. When 
there were two numbers, it meant that the guest in 
question had a parlor as well as a bedroom. 

Here he drew a long, satisfied breath, and 
turned away. The first half of his quest stood 
completed, — and that much more fully and easily 
than he had dared to hope. He could not but 
feel a certain new respect for himself as a man of 
resource and energy. He had demonstrated that 
people could not fool with him with impunity. 

It remained to decide what he would do with 
his discovery, now that it had been so satisfactorily 
made. As yet, he had given this hardly a thought. 

463 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Even now, it did not thrust itself forward as a 
thing demanding instant attention. It was much 
more important, first of all, to get a good break- 
fast. He had learned that there was another and 
less formal eating-place, downstairs in the base- 
ment by the bar, with an entrance from the street. 
He walked down by the inner stairway instead, 
feeling himself already at home in the big hotel. 
He ordered an ample breakfast, and came out 
while it was being served to wash and have his 
boots blacked, and he gave the man a quarter of a 
dollar. His pockets were filled with silver quarters, 
half-dollars, and dollars almost to a burdensome 
point, and in his valise was a bag full of smaller 
change, including many rolls of copper cents 
which Alice always counted and packed up on 
Mondays. In the hurry of leaving he had brought 
with him the church collections for the past two 
weeks. It occurred to him that he must keep a 
strict account of his expenditure. Meanwhile he 
gave ten cents to another man in a silk-sleeved 
cardigan jacket, who had merely stood by and 
looked at him while his boots were being polished. 
There was a sense of metropolitan affluence in the 
very atmosphere. 

The little table in the adjoining room, on which 
Theron found his meal in waiting for him, seemed 
a vision of delicate napery and refined appoint- 
ments in his eyes. He was wolfishly hungry, and 
the dishes he looked upon gave him back assur 
• 04 .^ 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ances by sight and smell that he was very happy 
as well. The servant in attendance had an ex- 
tremely white apron and a kindly black face. He 
bowed when Theron looked at him, with the air 
of a lifelong admirer and humble friend. 

“ I suppose you ’ll have claret with your break- 
fast, sir?” he remarked, as if it were a matter of 
course. 

“Why, certainly,” answered Theron, stretching 
his legs contentedly under the table, and tucking 
the corner of his napkin in his neckband. — “ cer- 
tainly, my good man.” 


CHAPTER XXX 


At ten o’clock Theron, loitering near the book= 
stall in the corridor, saw Father Forbes come 
downstairs, pass out through the big front doors, 
get into a carriage, and drive away. 

This relieved him of a certain sense of respon- 
sibility, and he retired to a corner sofa and sat 
down. The detective side of him being off duty, 
so to speak, there was leisure at last for reflection 
upon the other aspects of his mission. Yes ; it was 
high time for him to consider what he should do 
next. 

It was easier to recognize this fact, however, 
than to act upon it. His mind was full of tricksy 
devices for eluding this task of serious thought 
which he sought to impose upon it. It seemed so 
much pleasanter not to think at all — but just to 
drift. He found himself watching with envy the 
men who, as they came out from their breakfast, 
walked over to the bookstall, and bought cigars 
from the row of boxes nestling there among the 
newspaper piles. They had such evident delight 
in the work of selection ; they took off the ends of 
the cigars so carefully, and lighted them with such 
466 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 




meditative attention, — he could see that he was 
wofully handicapped by not knowing how to smoke. 
He had had the most wonderful breakfast of his 
life, but even in the consciousness of comfortable 
repletion which pervaded his being, there was an 
obstinate sense of something lacking. No doubt 
a good cigar was the thing needed to round out 
the perfection of such a breakfast. He half 
rose once, fired by a sudden resolution to go over 
and get one. But of course that was nonsense ; it 
would only make him sick. He sat down, and 
determinedly set himself to thinking. 

The effort finally brought fruit — and of a kind 
which gave him a very unhappy quarter of an 
hour. The lover part of him was uppermost now, 
insistently exposing all its raw surfaces to the stings 
and scalds of jealousy. Up to this moment, his 
brain had always evaded the direct question ot 
how he and the priest relatively stood in Celia’s 
estimation. It forced itself remorselessly upon 
him now ; and his thoughts, so far from shirking 
the subject, seemed to rise up to meet it. It was 
extremely unpleasant, all this. 

But then a calmer view asserted itself. Why go 
out of his way to invent anguish for himself? The 
relations between Celia and the priest, whatever 
they might be, were certainly of old standing. 
They had begun before his time. His own 
romance was a more recent affair, and must take 
its place, of course, subject to existing conditions. 

467. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


It was all right for him to come to New York, and 
satisfy his legitimate curiosity as to the exact 
character and scope of these conditions. But it 
was foolish to pretend to be amazed or dismayed 
at the discovery of their existence. They were a 
part of the situation which he, with his eyes wide 
open, had accepted. It was his function to 
triumph over them, to supplant them, to rear the 
edifice of his own victorious passion upon their 
ruins. It was to this that Celia’s kiss had invited 
him. It was for this that he had come to New 
York. To let his purpose be hampered or 
thwarted now by childish doubts and jealousies 
would be ridiculous. 

He rose, and holding himself very erect, walked 
with measured deliberation across the corridor and 
up the broad staircase. There was an elevator 
near at hand, he had noticed, but he preferred the 
stairs. One or two of the colored boys clustered 
about the foot of the stairs looked at him, and he 
had a moment of dreadful apprehension lest they 
should stop his progress. Nothing was said, and 
he went on. The numbers on the first floor were 
not what he wanted, and after some wandering 
about he ascended to the next, and then to the 
third. Every now and then he encountered at- 
tendants, but intuitively he bore himself with an 
air of knowing what he was about which protected 
him from inquiry. 

Finally he came upon the hall-way he sought. 

468 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Passing along, he found the doors bearing the 
numbers he had memorized so well. They were 
quite close together, and there was nothing to help 
him guess which belonged to the parlor. He hesi- 
tated, gazing wistfully from one to the other. In 
the instant of indecision, even while his alert ear 
caught, the sound of feet coming along toward the 
passage in which he stood, a thought came to 
quicken his resolve. It became apparent to him 
that his discovery gave him a certain new measure 
of freedom with Celia, a sort of right to take things 
more for granted than heretofore. He chose a door 
at random, and rapped distinctly on the panel. 

“ Come ! ” 

The voice he knew for Celia’s. The single word, 
however, recalled the usage of Father Forbes, which 
he had noted more than once at the pastorate, 
when Maggie had knocked. 

He straightened his shoulders, took his hat off, 
and pushed open the door. It was the parlor, — 
a room of sofas, pianos, big easy-chairs, and luxuri- 
ous bric-a-brac. A tall woman was walking up and 
down in it, with bowed head. Her back was at 
the moment toward him ; and he looked at her, 
saying to himself that this was the lady of hi s 
dreams, the enchantress of the kiss, the woman 
who loved him — but somehow it did not seem to 
his senses to be Celia. 

She turned, and moved a step or two in his di- 
rection before she mechanically lifted her eyes, and 

469 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

saw who was standing in her doorway. She stopped 
short, and regarded him. Her face was in the 
shadow, and he could make out nothing of its 
expression, save that there was a general effect 
of gravity about it. 

“ I cannot receive you,” she said. “You must 
go away. You have no business to come like this 
without sending up your card.” 

Theron smiled at her. The notion of taking in 
earnest her inhospitable words did not at all occur 
to him. He could see now that her face had vexed 
and saddened lines upon it, and the sharpness of 
her tone remained in his ears. But he smiled again 
gently, to reassure her. 

“ I ought to have sent up my name, I know,” he 
said, “ but I could n’t bear to wait. I just saw 
your name on the register, and — you will forgive 
me, won’t you? — I ran to you at once. I know 
you won’t have the heart to send me away ! ” 

She stood where she had halted, her arms behind 
her, looking him fixedly in the face. He had made 
a movement to advance, and offer his hand in 
greeting, but her posture checked the impulse. 
His courage began to falter under her inspection. 

“Must I really go down again?” he pleaded. 
“ It ’s a crushing penalty to suffer for such a little 
indiscretion. I was so excited to find you were 
here — I never stopped to think. Don’t send me 
away ; please don’t ! ” 

Celia raised her head. “ Well, shut the door, 

,470 


THE DAMNATION OF TIIERON WARK 

then,” she said, “ since you are so anxious to stay. 
You would have done much better, though, very 
much better indeed, to have taken the hint and 
gone away.” 

“Will you shake hands with me, Celia?” he 
asked softly, as he came near her. 

“ Sit there, please ! ” she made answer, indicating 
a chair in the middle of the room. He obeyed 
her, but to his surprise, instead of seating herself 
as well, she began walking up and down the length 
of the floor again. After a turn or two she stopped 
in front of him, and looked him full in the eye. 
The light from the windows was on her countenance 
now, and its revelations vaguely troubled him. It 
was a Celia he had never seen before who con- 
fronted him. 

“ I am much occupied by other matters,” she 
said, speaking with cold impassivity, “ but still I 
find myself curious to know just what limits you set 
to your dishonesty.” 

Theron stared up at her. His lips quivered, but 
no speech came to them. If this was all merely 
fond playfulness, it was being carried to a heart- 
aching point. 

" I saw you hiding about in the depot at home 
last evening,” she went on. “ You come up here, 
pretending to have discovered me by accident, but 
I saw you following me from the Grand Central 
this morning.” 

“Yes, I did both these things,” said Theron, 

47 1 . 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


boldly. A fine bravery tingled in his veins all at 
once. He looked into her face and found the 
spirit to disregard its frowning aspect. “Yes, I 
did them,” he repeated defiantly. “ That is not 
the hundredth part, or the thousandth part, of what 
I would do for your sake. I have got way beyond 
caring for any consequences. Position, reputation, 
the good opinion of fools, — what are they ? Life 
itself, — what does it amount to ? Nothing at all — 
with you in the balance ! ” 

“ Yes — but I am not in the balance,” observed 
Celia, quietly. “That is where you have made 
your mistake.” 

Theron laid aside his hat. Women were curious 
creatures, he reflected. Some were susceptible to 
one line of treatment, some to another. His own 
reading of Celia had always been that she liked 
opposition, of a smart, rattling, almost cheeky, sort. 
One got on best with her by saying bright things. 
He searched his brain now for some clever quip 
that would strike sparks from the adamantine mood 
which for the moment it was her whim to assume. 
To cover the process, he smiled a little. Then her 
beauty, as she stood before him, her queenly form 
clad in a more stiffly fashionable dress than he had 
seen her wearing before, appealed afresh and over- 
whelmingly to him. He rose to his feet. 

“ Have you forgotten our talk in the woods ? ” 
he murmured with a wooing note. “ Have you 
forgotten the kiss?” 


472 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


She shook her head calmly. “ I have forgotten 
nothing.’* 

“ Then why play with me so cruelly now ? ” he 
went on, in a voice of tender deprecation. “ I know 
you don’t mean it, but all the same it bruises my 
heart a little. I build myself so wholly upon you, 
I have made existence itself depend so completely 
upon your smile, upon a soft glance in your eyes, 
that when they are not there, why, I suffer, I don’t 
know how to live at all. So be kinder to me, 
Celia ! ” 

“ I was kinder, as you call it, when you came 
in,” she replied. “ I told you to go away. That 
was pure kindness, — more kindness than you 
deserved.” 

Theron looked at his hat, where it stood on the 
carpet by his feet. He felt tears coming into his 
eyes. “ You tell me that you remember,” he said, 
in depressed tones, “and yet you treat me like 
this ! Perhaps I am wrong. No doubt it is my 
own fault. I suppose I ought not to have come 
down here at all.” 

Celia nodded her head in assent to this view. 

“ But I swear that I was helpless in the matter,” 
he burst forth. “ I had to come ! It would have 
been literally impossible for me to have stayed at 
home, knowing that you were here, and knowing 
also that — that — ” 

“ Go on ! ” said Celia, thrusting forth her under- 
lip a trifle, and hardening still further the gleam in 

47S 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


her eye, as he stumbled over his sentence and 
left it unfinished. “ What was the other thing that 
you were ‘ knowing ’ ? ” 

“ Knowing, — ” he took up the word hesitat- 
ingly, — “ knowing that life would be insupportable 
to me if I could not be near you.” 

She curled her lip at him. “ You skated over 
the thin spot very well,” she commented. “It 
was on the tip of your tongue to mention the fact 
that Father Forbes came with me. Oh, I can 
read you through and through, Mr. Ware.” 

In a misty way Theron felt things slipping from 
his grasp. The rising moisture blurred his eyes as 
their gaze clung to Celia. 

“ Then if you do read me,” he protested, “ you 
must know how utterly my heart and brain are 
filled with you. No other man in all the world 
can yield himself so absolutely to the woman he 
worships as I can. You have taken possession of 
me so wholly, I am not in the least master of 
myself any more. I don’t know what I say or 
what I do. I am not worthy of you, I know. No 
man alive could be that. But no one else will 
idolize and reverence you as I do. Believe me 
when I say that, Celia ! And how can you blame 
me, in your heart, for following you? Whither 
thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I 
will lodge ; thy people shall be my people, and 
thy God my God ; where thou diest, will I die, 
and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to 

424 . 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


me, and more also, if aught but death part thee 
and me!” 

Celia shrugged her shoulders, and moved a few 
steps away from him. Something like despair 
seized upon him. 

“ Surely,’ * he urged with passion, — “ surely I 
have a right to remind you of the kiss ! ” 

She turned. “ The kiss,” she said meditatively. 
“Yes, you have a right to remind me of it. Oh, 
yes, an undoubted right. You have another right 
too, — the right to have the kiss explained to you. 
It was of the good-bye order. It signified that we 
were n’t to meet again, and that just for one little 
moment I permitted myself to be sorry for you. 
That was all.” 

He held himself erect under the incredible 
words, and gazed blankly at her. The magnitude 
of what he confronted bewildered him ; his mind 
was incapable of taking it in. “ You mean — ” he 
started to say, and then stopped, helplessly staring 
into her face, with a dropped jaw. It was too 
much to try to think what she meant. 

A little side- thought sprouted in the confusion 
of his brain. It grew until it spread a bitter 
smile over his pale face. “ I know so little about 
kisses,” he said ; “ I am such a greenhorn at that 
sort of thing. You should have had pity on my 
inexperience, and told me just what brand of kiss 
it was I was getting. Probably I ought to have 
been able to distinguish, but you see I was brought 
t47S 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


up in the country — on a farm. They don’t have 
kisses in assorted varieties there.” 

She bowed her head slightly. “Yes, you are 
entitled to say that,” she assented. “ I was to 
blame, and it is quite fair that you should tell me 
so. You spoke of your inexperience, your inno- 
cence. That was why I kissed you in saying 
good-bye. It was in memory of that innocence of 
yours, to which you yourself had been busy saying 
good-bye ever since I first saw you. The idea 
seemed to me to mean something at the moment. 
I see now that it was too subtle. I do not usually 
err on that side.” 

Theron kept his hold upon her gaze, as if it 
afforded him bodily support. He felt that he 
ought to stoop and take up his hat, but he dared 
not look away from her. “ Do you not err now, 
on the side of cruelty? ” he asked her piteously. 

It seemed for the instant as if she were waver- 
ing, and he swiftly thrust forth other pleas. “I 
admit that I did wrong to follow you to New York. 
I see that now. But it was an offence committed 
in entire good faith. Think of it, Celia ! I have 
never seen you since that day, — that day in the 
woods. I have waited — and waited — with no 
sign from you, no chance of seeing you at all. 
Think what that meant to me ! Everything in the 
world had been altered for me, torn up by the 
roots. I was a new being, plunged into a new 
existence. The kiss had done that. But until J 
■ 4 ? 6 . 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


saw you again, I could not tell whether this vast 
change in me and my life was for good or for bad, 
— whether the kiss had come to me as a blessing 
or a curse. The suspense was killing me, Celia ! 
That is why, when I learned that you were coming 
here, I threw everything to the winds and followed 
you. You blame me for it, and I bow my head 
and accept the blame. But are you justified in 
punishing me so terribly, — in going on after 
I have confessed my error, and cutting my 
heart into little strips, putting me to death by 
torture ? ” 

“ Sit down,” said Celia, with a softened weari- 
ness in her voice. She seated herself in front of 
him as he sank into his chair again. “I don't, 
want to give you unnecessary pain, but you have 
insisted on forcing yourself into a position where 
there is n’t anything else but pain. I warned you 
to go away, but you wouldn’t. No matter how 
gently I may try to explain things to you, you are 
bound to get nothing but suffering out of the 
explanation. Now shall I still go on? ” 

He inclined his head in token of assent, and 
did not lift it again, but raised toward her a dis- 
consolate gaze from a pallid, drooping face. 

" It is all in a single word, Mr. Ware,” she pro- 
ceeded, in low tones. “ I speak for others as well 
as myself, mind you, — we find that you are a 
bore.” 

Theron’s stiffened countenance remained im 
477 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


movable. He continued to stare unblinkingly up 
into her eyes. 

“ We were disposed to like you very much when 
we first knew you,” Celia went on. “You im- 
pressed us as an innocent, simple, genuine young 
character, full of mother’s milk. It was like the 
smell of early spring in the country to come in 
contact with you. Your honesty of nature, your 
sincerity in that absurd religion of yours, your 
general naivete of mental and spiritual get-up, all 
pleased us a great deal. We thought you were 
going to be a real acquisition.” 

“Just a moment — whom do you mean by 
‘we’?” He asked the question calmly enough, 
but in a voice with an effect of distance in it. 

“ It may not be necessary to enter into that,” 
she replied. “ Let me go on. But then it became 
apparent, little by little, that we had misjudged 
you. We liked you, as I have said, because you 
were unsophisticated and delightfully fresh and 
natural. Somehow we took it for granted you 
would stay so. But that is just what you did n’t 
do, — just what you had n’t the sense to try to do. 
Instead, we found you inflating yourself with all 
sorts of egotisms and vanities. We found you 
presuming upon the friendships which had been 
mistakenly extended to you. Do you want in- 
stances? You went to Dr. Ledsmar’s house that 
very day after I had been with you to get a piano 
at Thurston’s, and tried to inveigle him into 
47 8 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


talking scandal about me. You came to me with 
tales about him. You went to Father Forbes, and 
sought to get him to gossip about us both. Neither 
of those men will ever ask you inside his house 
again. But that is only one part of it. Your 
whole mind became an unpleasant thing to con 
template. You thought it would amuse and im- 
press us to hear you ridiculing and reviling the 
people of your church, whose money supports you, 
and making a mock of the things they believe in, 
and which you for your life would n’t dare let them 
know you didn’t believe in. You talked to us 
slightingly about your wife. What were you think- 
ing of, not to comprehend that that would disgust 
us? You showed me once — do you remember? 

— a life of George Sand that you had just bought, 

— bought because you had just discovered that 
she had an unclean side to her life. You chuckled 
as you spoke to me about it, and you were for 
all the world like a little nasty boy, giggling over 
something dirty that older people had learned not 
to notice. These are merely random incidents. 
They are just samples, picked hap- hazard, of the 
things in you which have been opening our eyes, 
little by little, to our mistake. I can understand 
that all the while you really fancied that you were 
expanding, growing, in all directions. What you 
took to be improvement was degeneration. When 
you thought that you were impressing us most by 
your smart sayings and doings, you were remind- 

479 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Ing us most of the fable about the donkey trying 
to play lap-dog. And it was n’t even an honest, 
straightforward donkey at that ! ” 

She uttered these last words sorrowfully, her 
hands clasped in her lap, and her eyes sinking to 
the floor. A silence ensued. Then Theron 
reached a groping hand out for his hat, and, rising, 
walked with a lifeless, automatic step to the door. 

He had it half open, when the impossibility of 
leaving in this way towered suddenly in his path 
and overwhelmed him. He slammed the door to, 
and turned as if he had been whirled round by 
some mighty wind. He came toward her, with 
something almost menacing in the vigor of his 
movements, and in the wild look upon his white, 
set face. Halting before her, he covered the 
tailor-clad figure, the coiled red hair, the upturned 
face with its simulated calm, the big brown eyes, 
the rings upon the clasped fingers, with a sweeping, 
comprehensive glare of passion. 

“ This is what you have done to me, then ! ” 

His voice was unrecognizable in his own ears, — 
hoarse and broken, but with a fright -compelling 
something in it which stimulated his rage. The 
horrible notion of killing her, there where she sat, 
spread over the chaos of his mind with an effect 
of unearthly light, — red and abnormally evil. It 
was like that first devilish radiance ushering in 
Creation, of which the first-fruit was Cain. Why 
should he not kill her? In all ages, women had 
480. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


been slain for less. Yes, — and men had been 
hanged. Something rose and stuck in his dry 
throat ; and as he swallowed it down, the sinister 
flare of murderous fascination died suddenly away 
into darkness. The world was all black again, — 
plunged in the Egyptian night which lay upon the 
face of the deep while the earth was yet without 
form and void. He was alone on it, — alone 
among awful, planetary solitudes which crushed 
him. 

The sight of Celia, sitting motionless only a 
pace in front of him, was plain enough to his eyes. 
It was an illusion. She was really a star, many 
millions of miles away. These things were hard to 
understand ; but they were true, none the less. 
People seemed to be about him, but in fact he 
was alone. He recalled that even the little child 
in the car, playing with those two buttons on a 
string, would have nothing to do with him. Take 
his money, yes ; take all he would give her — but 
not smile at him, not come within reach of him ! 
Men closed the doors of their houses against him. 
The universe held him at arm’s length as a 
nuisance. 

He was standing with one knee upon a sofa. 
Unconsciously he had moved round to the side of 
Celia ; and as he caught the effect of her face now 
in profile, memory-pictures began all at once 
building themselves in his brain, — pictures of her 
standing in the darkened room of the cottage of 
31 481 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


death, declaiming the Conjiteor ; of her seated a* 
the piano, under the pure, mellowed candle-light ; 
of her leaning her chin on her hands, and gazing 
meditatively at the leafy background of the woods 
they were in ; of her lying back, indolently content, 
in the deck-chair on the yacht of his fancy, — that 
yacht which a few hours before had seemed so 
brilliantly and bewitchingly real to him, and now 
— now — ! 

He sank in a heap upon the couch, and, bury- 
ing his face among its cushions, wept and groaned 
aloud. His collapse was absolute. He sobbed 
with the abandonment of one who, in the veritable 
presence of death, lets go all sense of relation to life. 

Presently some one was touching him on the 
shoulder, — an incisive, pointed touch, — and he 
checked himself, and lifted his face. 

“You will have to get up, and present some 
sort of an appearance, and go away at once,’ 
Celia said to him in low, rapid tones. “Some 
gentlemen are at the door, whom I have been 
waiting for.” 

As he stupidly sat up and tried to collect his 
faculties, Celia had opened the door and admitted 
two visitors. The foremost was Father Forbes; 
and he, with some whispered, smiling words, pre- 
sented to her his companion, a tall, robust, florid 
man of middle-age, with a frock-coat and a gray 
mustache, sharply waxed. The three spoke for 
a moment together. Then the priest’s wandering 
482. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


eye suddenly lighted upon the figure on the 
sofa. He stared, knitted his brows, and then 
lifted them in inquiry as he turned to Celia. 

“Poor man!” she said readily, in tones loud 
enough to reach Theron. " It is our neighbor, 
Father, the Rev. Mr. Ware. He hit upon my 
name in the register quite unexpectedly, and I 
had him come up. He is in sore distress, — a 
great and sudden bereavement. He is going 
now. Won’t you speak to him in the hall, — a 
few words, Father? It would please him. He 
is terribly depressed.” 

The words had drawn Theron to his feet, as by 
some mechanical process. He took up his hat 
and moved dumbly to the door. It seemed to 
him that Celia intended offering to shake hands; 
but he went past her with only some confused 
exchange of glances and a murmured word or 
two. The tall stranger, who drew aside to let him 
pass, had acted as if he expected to be introduced. 
Theron, emerging into the hall, leaned against the 
wall and looked dreamily at the priest, who had 
stepped out with him. 

“I am very sorry to learn tha. you are in 
trouble, Mr. Ware,” Father Forbes said, gently 
enough, but in hurried tones. “ Miss Madden is 
also in trouble. I mentioned to you that her 
brother had got into a serious scrape. I have 
brought my old friend, General Brady, to consult 
with her about the matter. He knows all the 

483 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


parties concerned, and he can set things right if 
anybody can.” 

“ It ’s a mistake about me, — I’m not in any 
trouble at all,” said Theron. “ I just dropped in 
to make a friendly call.” 

The priest glanced sharply at him, noting with 
a swift, informed scrutiny how he sprawled against 
the wall, and what vacuity his eyes and loosened 
lips expressed. 

“Then you have a talent for the inopportune 
amounting to positive genius,” said Father Forbes, 
with a stormy smile. 

“Tell me this, Father Forbes,” the other de- 
manded, with impulsive suddenness, “‘is it true 
that you don’t want me in your house again? Is 
that the truth or not ? ” 

“ The truth is always relative, Mr. Ware,” 
replied the priest, turning away, and closing the 
door of the parlor behind him with a decisive 
sound. 

Left alone, Theron started to make his way 
downstairs. He found his legs wavering under 
him and making zigzag movements of their own 
in a bewildering fashion. He referred this at first, 
in an outburst of fresh despair, to the effects of 
his great grief. Then, as he held tight to the 
banister and governed his descent step by step, it 
occurred to him that it must be the wine he had 
had for breakfast. Upon examination, he was not 
so unhappy, after all. 


484 


CHAPTER XXXI 


At the second peal of the door-bell, Brother 
Soulsby sat up in bed. It was still pitch-dark, and 
the memory of the first ringing fluttered musically 
in his awakening consciousness as a part of some 
dream he had been having. 

“ Who the deuce can that be ? ” he mused aloud, 
in querulous resentment at the interruption. 

“ Put your head out of the window, and ask,’* 
suggested his wife, drowsily. 

The bell-pull scraped violently in its socket, and 
a third outburst of shrill reverberations clamored 
through the silent house. 

“ Whatever you do, I ’d do it before he yanked 
the whole thing to pieces,” added the wife, with 
more decision. 

Brother Soulsby was wide awake now. He 
sprang to the floor, and, groping about in the 
obscurity, began drawing on some of his clothes. 
He rapped on the window during the process, to 
show that the house was astir, and a minute after- 
ward made his way out of the room and down the 
stairs, the boards creaking under his stockinged 
feet as he went. 

485 


THE DAMNATION OF TIIERON WARE 


Nearly a quarter of an hour passed before he 
returned. Sister Soulsby, lying in sleepy quies- 
cence, heard vague sounds of voices at the front 
door, and did not feel interested enough to lift her 
head and listen. A noise of footsteps on the side- 
walk followed, first receding from the door, then 
turning toward it, this second time marking the 
presence of more than one person. There seemed 
in this the implication of a guest, and she shook 
off the dazing impulses which enveloped her facul- 
ties, and waited to hear more. There came up, 
after further muttering of male voices, the unde* 
niable chink of coins striking against one another. 
Then more footsteps, the resonant slam of a car- 
riage door out in the street, the grinding of wheels 
turning on the frosty road, and the racket of a 
vehicle and horses going off at a smart pace into 
the night. Somebody had come, then. She 
yawned at the thought, but remained well awake, 
tracing idly in her mind, as various slight sounds 
rose from the lower floor, the different things 
Soulsby was probably doing. Their spare room 
was down there, directly underneath, but curiously 
enough no one seemed to enter it. The faint 
murmur of conversation which from time to time 
reached her came from the parlor instead. At 
last she heard her husband’s soft tread coming up 
the staircase, and still there had been no hint of 
employing the guest-chamber. What could he be 
about? she wondered. 

.486 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Brother Soulsby came in, bearing a small lamp 
in his hand, the reddish light of which, flaring up- 
ward, revealed an unlooked-for display of amuse- 
ment on his thin, beardless face. He advanced to 
the bedside, shading the glare from her blinking 
eyes with his palm, and grinned. 

“ A thousand guesses, old lady,” he said, with a 
dry chuckle, “ and you would n’t have a ghost of 
a chance. You might guess till Hades froze over 
seven feet thick, and still you would n’t hit it.” 

She sat up in turn. “Good gracious, man,’* 
she began, “ you don’t mean — ” Here the cheer- 
ful gleam in his small eyes reassured her, and she 
sighed relief, then smiled confusedly. “ I half 
thought, just for the minute,” she explained, “it 
might be some bounder who ’d come East to try 
and blackmail me. But no, who is it — and what 
on earth have you done with him ? ” 

Brother Soulsby cackled in merriment. “It’s 
Brother Ware of Octavius, out on a little bat, all 
by himself. He says he ’s been on the loose only 
two days ; but it looks more like a fortnight.” 

“ Our Brother Ware ? ” she regarded him with 
open-eyed surprise. 

“ Well, yes, I suppose he ’s our Brother Ware, — • 
some,” returned Soulsby, genially. “ He seems to 
think so, anyway.” 

“ But tell me about it ! ” she urged eagerly. 
“What’s the matter with him? How does he 
explain it?” 


487 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


"Well, he explains it pretty badly, if you ask 
me,” said Soulsby, with a droll, joking eye and a 
mock-serious voice. He seated himself on the 
side of the bed, facing her, and still considerately 
shielding her from the light of the lamp he held. 
“But don’t think I suggested any explanations. 
I Ve been a mother myself. He ’s merely filled 
himself up to the neck with rum, in the simple, 
ordinary, good old-fashioned way. That ’s all. 
What is there to explain about that?” 

She looked meditatively at him for a time, 
shaking her head. “ No, Soulsby,” she said 
gravely, at last. “ This is n’t any laughing matter. 
You may be sure something bad has happened, to 
set him off like that. I ’m going to get up and 
dress right now. What time is it?” 

“Now don’t you do anything of the sort,” he 
urged persuasively. “ It is n’t five o’clock ; it ’ll be 
dark for nearly an hour yet. Just you turn over, 
and have another nap. He *s all right. I put him 
on the sofa, with the buffalo robe round him. You '11 
find him there, safe and sound, when it ’s time for 
white folks to get up. You know how it breaks 
you up all day, not to get your full sleep.” 

“ I don’t care if it makes me look as old as the 
everlasting hills,” she said. “Can’t you under- 
stand, Soulsby? The thing worries me, — gets on 
my nerves. I couldn’t close an eye, if I tried. 
I took a great fancy to that young man. I told 
you so at the time.” 


488 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Soulsby nodded, and turned down the wick of 
his lamp a trifle. “Yes, I know you did,” he 
remarked in placidly non-contentious tones. “1 
can’t say I saw much in him myself, but I daresay 
you ’re right.” There followed a moment’s silence, 
during which he experimented in turning the wick 
up again. “ But, anyway,” he went on, « there 
is n’t anything you can do. He ’ll sleep it off, and 
the longer he ’s left alone the better. It is n’t as 
if we had a hired girl, who ’d come down and find 
him there, and give the whole thing away. He ’s 
fixed up there perfectly comfortable; and when 
he ’s had his sleep out, and wakes up on his own 
account, he ’ll be feeling a heap better.” 

The argument might have carried conviction, 
but on the instant the sound of footsteps came to 
them from the room below. The subdued noise 
rose regularly, as of one pacing to and fro. 

“ No, Soulsby, you come back to bed, and get 
your sleep out. I’m going downstairs. It’s no 
good talking; I’m going.” 

Brother Soulsby offered no further opposition, 
either by talk or demeanor, but returned con- 
tentedly to bed, pulling the comforter over his 
ears, and falling into the slow, measured respiration 
of tranquil slumber before his wife was ready to 
leave the room. 

The dim, cold gray of twilight was sifting fur- 
tively through the lace curtains of the front windows 
when Mrs. Soulsby, lamp in hand, entered the 

489 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


parlor. She confronted a figure she would have 
hardly recognized. The man seemed to have 
been submerged in a bath of disgrace. From the 
crown of his head to the soles of his feet, every- 
thing about him was altered, distorted, smeared 
with an intangible effect of shame. In the vague 
gloom of the middle distance, between lamp and 
window, she noticed that his shoulders were 
crouched, like those of some shambling tramp. 
The frowsy shadows of a stubble beard lay on his 
jaw and throat. His clothes were crumpled and 
hung awry ; his boots were stained with mud. 
The silk hat on the piano told its battered story 
with dumb eloquence. 

Lifting the lamp, she moved forward a step, 
and threw its light upon his face. A little groan 
sounded involuntarily upon her lips. Out of a 
mask of unpleasant features, swollen with drink 
and weighted by the physical craving for rest and 
sleep, there stared at her two bloodshot eyes, 
shining with the wild light of hysteria. The effect 
of dishevelled hair, relaxed muscles, and rough, 
half-bearded lower face lent to these eyes, as she 
caught their first glance, an unnatural glare. The 
lamp shook in her hand for an instant. Then, 
ashamed of herself, she held out her other hand 
fearlessly to him. 

“ Tell me all about it, Theron,” she said calmly, 
and with a soothing, motherly intonation in her 
voice. 


490 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


He did not take the hand she offered, but 
suddenly, with a wailing moan, cast himself on his 
knees at her feet. He was so tall a man that the 
movement could have no grace. He abased his 
head awkwardly, to bury it among the folds of the 
skirts at her ankles. She stood still for a moment, 
looking down upon him. Then, blowing out the 
light, she reached over and set the smoking lamp 
on the piano near by. The daylight made things 
distinguishable in a wan, uncertain way, throughout 
the room. 

“ I have come out of hell, for the sake of hearing 
some human being speak to me like that ! ” 

The thick utterance proceeded in a muffled 
fashion from where his face grovelled against her 
dress. Its despairing accents appealed to her, but 
even more was she touched by the ungainly figure 
he made, sprawling on the carpet. 

“Well, since you are out, stay out,” she an- 
swered, as reassuringly as she could. “But get 
up and take a seat here beside me, like a 
sensible man, and tell me all about it. Come ! 
I insist ! ” 

In obedience to her tone, and the sharp tug at 
his shoulder with which she emphasized it, he got 
slowly to his feet, and listlessly seated himself on 
the sofa to which she pointed. He hung his head, 
and began catching his breath with a periodical 
gasp, half hiccough, half sob. 

“First of all,” she said, in her brisk, matter 
49 1 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


of- fact manner, “ don’t you want to lie down there 
again, and have me tuck you up snug with the 
buffalo robe, and go to sleep ? That would be the 
best thing you could do.** 

He shook his head disconsolately, from side to 
side. “ I can’t ! ” he groaned, with a swifter re- 
currence of the sob-like convulsions. “ I ’m dying 
for sleep, but I ’m too — too frightened ! ” 

“ Come, I ’ll sit beside you till you drop off,” she 
said, with masterful decision. He suffered himself 
to be pushed into recumbency on the couch, and 
put his head with docility on the pillow she brought 
from the spare room. When she had spread the 
fur over him, and pushed her chair close to the 
sofa, she stood by it for a little, looking down in 
meditation at his demoralized face. Under the 
painful surface-blur of wretchedness and fatigued 
debauchery, she traced reflectively the lineaments 
of the younger and cleanlier countenance she had 
seen a few months before. Nothing essential had 
been taken away. There was only this pestiferous 
overlaying of shame and cowardice to be removed. 
The face underneath was still all right. 

With a soft, maternal touch, she smoothed the 
hair from his forehead into order. Then she 
seated herself, and, when he got his hand out from 
under the robe and thrust it forth timidly, she 
took it in hers and held it in a warm, sympathetic 
grasp. He closed his eyes at this, and gradually 
the paroxysmal catch in his breathing lapsed 
- 49 2 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

The daylight strengthened, until at last tiny flecks 
of sunshine twinkled in the meshes of the further 
curtains at the window. She fancied him asleep, 
and gently sought to disengage her hand, but his 
fingers clutched at it with vehemence, and his 
eyes were wide open. 

“ I can’t sleep at all,” he murmured. “ I want 
to talk.” 

“ There ’s nothing in the world to hinder you,” 
she commented smilingly. 

“ I tell you the solemn truth,” he said, lift- 
ing his voice in dogged assertion : “ the best ser- 
mon I ever preached in my life, I preached only 
three weeks ago, at the camp- meeting. It was 
admitted by everybody to be far and away my 
finest effort ! They will tell you the same ! ” 

“It’s quite likely,” assented Sister Soulsby. 
“ I quite believe it.” 

“ Then how can anybody say that I ’ve degen- 
erated, that I ’ve become a fool?” he demanded. 

“ I have n’t heard anybody hint at such a 
thing,” she answered quietly. 

“ No, of course, you have n’t heard them I ” he 
cried. “ 1 heard them, though ! ” Then, forcing 
himself to a sitting posture, against the restraint 
of her hand, he flung back the covering. “ I ’m 
burning hot already ! Yes, those were the identi- 
cal words : I have n’t improved ; I ’ve degen- 
erated. People hate me ; they won’t have me in 
their houses. They say I v m a nuisance and a bore, 
493 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


I ’m like a little nasty boy. That ’s what they say. 
Even a young man who was dying — lying right 
on the edge of his open grave — told me solemnly 
that I reminded him of a saint once, but I was 
only fit for a barkeeper now. They say I really 
don’t know anything at all. And I ’m not only a 
fool, they say, I ’m a dishonest fool into the 
bargain ! ” 

“ But who says such twaddle as that? ” she re- 
turned consolingly. The violence of his emotion 
disturbed her. “ You must n’t imagine such 
things. You are among friends here. Other 
people are your friends, too. They have the very 
highest opinion of you.” 

“ I have n’t a friend on earth but you ! ” he 
declared solemnly. His eyes glowed fiercely, and 
his voice sank into a grave intensity of tone. “ I 
was going to kill myself. I went on to the big 
bridge to throw myself off, and a policeman saw 
me trying to climb over the railing, and he grabbed 
me and marched me away. Then he threw me 
out at the entrance, and said he would club my 
head off if I came there again. And then I went 
and stood and let the cable-cars pass close by me, 
and twenty times I thought I had the nerve to 
throw myself under the next one, and then I waited 
for the next — and — I was afraid ! And then I 
was in a crowd somewhere, and the warning came 
to me that I was going to die. The fool need n’t 
go kill himself : God would take care of that. It 
494 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


was my heart, you know. I *ve had that terrible 
fluttering once before. It seized me this time, 
and I fell down in the crowd, and some people 
walked over me, but some one else helped me up, 
and let me sit down in a big lighted hallway, the 
entrance to some theatre, and some one brought 
me some brandy, but somebody else said I was 
drunk, and they took it away again, and put me 
out. They could see I was a fool, that I had n’t 
a friend on earth. And when I went out, there 
was a big picture of a woman in tights, and the 
word ‘Amazons* overhead — and then I remem- 
oered you. I knew you were my friend, — the 
only one I have on earth.” 

“ It is very flattering, — to be remembered like 
that,” said Sister Soulsby, gently. The disposition 
to laugh was smothered by a pained perception of 
the suffering he was undergoing. His face had 
grown drawn and haggard under the burden of his 
memories as he rambled on. 

“ So I came straight to you,” he began again. 
“ I had just money enough left to pay my fare. 
The rest is in my valise at the hotel, — the Murray 
Hill Hotel. It belongs to the church. I stole it 
from the church When I am dead they can get 
it back again ! ** 

Sister Soulsby forced a smile to her lips. 
“What nonsense you talk — about dying 1” she 
exclaimed. “Why, man alive, you’ll sleep this 
all off like a top, if you ’ll only lie down and give 


TOE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


yourself a chance. Come, now, you must do as 
you 're told.” 

With a resolute hand, she made him lie down 
again, and once more covered him with the fur. 
He submitted, and did not even offer to put out 
his arm this' time, but looked in piteous dumbness 
at her for a long time. While she sat thus in si- 
lence, the sound of Brother Soulsby moving about 
upstairs became audible. 

Theron heard it, and the importance of hurry- 
ing on some further disclosure seemed to suggest 
itself. “ I can see you think I ’m just drunk,” he 
said, in low, sombre tones. “ Of course that ’s 
what he thought. The hackman thought so, and 
so did the conductor, and everybody. But I 
hoped you would know better. I was sure you 
would see that it was something worse than that. 
See here, I ’ll tell you. Then you ’ll understand. 
I ’ve been drinking for two days and one whole 
night, on my feet all the while, wandering alone 
in that big strange New York, going through 
places where they murdered men for ten cents, 
mixing myself up with the worst people in low 
bar-rooms and dance-houses, and they saw I had 
* money in my pocket, too, — and yet nobody 
touched me, or offered to lay a finger on me. Do 
you know why? They understood that I wanted 
to get drunk, and couldn’t. The Indians won’t 
harm an idiot, or lunatic, you know. Well, it was 
the same with these vilest of the vile. They saw 
49 6 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


that I was a fool whom God had taken hold of, to 
break his heart first, and then to craze his brain, 
and then to fling him on a dunghill to die like a 
dog. They believe in God, those people. They ’re 
the only cres who do, it seems to me. And they 
wouldn’t interfere when they saw what He was 
doing to me. But I tell you I was n’t drunk. I 
have n’t been drunk. I ’m only heart-broken, and 
crushed out of shape and life, — that ’s all. And 
I ’ve crawled here just to have a friend by me 
when — when I come to the end.” 

“You’re not talking very sensibly, or very 
bravely either, Theron Ware,” remarked his com- 
panion. “ It ’s cowardly to give way to notions 
like that.” 

“ Oh, 1 ’m not afraid to die ; don’t think that,” 
he remonstrated wearily. “ If there is a Judg- 
ment, it has hit me as hard as it can already. 
There can’t be any hell worse than that I ’ve gone 
through. Here I am talking about hell,” he con- 
tinued, with a pained contraction of the muscles 
about his mouth, — a still-born, malformed smile, 
— “ as if I believed in one ! I ’ve got way through 
all my beliefs, you know. I tell you that 
frankly.” 

“ It ’s none of my business,” she reassured him. 
“ I ’m not your Bishop, or your confessor. I ’m 
just your friend, your pal, that ’s all.” 

“ Look here ! ” he broke in, with some anima- 
tion and a new intensity of glance and voice. 

3 * 407 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ If I was going to live, I ’d have some funny 
things to tell. Six months ago I was a good man. 
1 not only seemed to be good, to others and to 
myself, but I was good. I had a soul ; I had a 
conscience. I was going along doing my duty, and 
I was happy in it. We were poor, Alice and I, 
and people behaved rather hard toward us, and 
sometimes we were a little down in the mouth 
about it ; but that was all. We really were happy ; 
and I, — I really was a good man. Here ’s the 
kind of joke God plays ! You see me here six 
months after. Look at me ! I have n’t got an 
honest hair in my head. I ’m a bad man through 
and through, that ’s what I am. I look all around 
at myself, and there is n’t an atom left anywhere 
of the good man I used to be. And, mind you, 
I never lifted a finger to prevent the change. I 
did n’t resist once ; I did n’t make any fight. I 
just walked deliberately down-hill, with my eyes 
wide open. I told myself all the while that I was 
climbing up-hill instead, but I knew in my heart 
that it was a lie. Everything about me was a lie. 
I would n’t be telling the truth, even now, if — if 
I had n’t come to the end of my rope. Now, how 
do you explain that ? How can it be explained ? 
Was I really rotten to the core all the time, years 
ago, when I seemed to everybody, myself and the 
rest, to be good and straight and sincere? Was it 
all a sham, or does God take a good man and turn 
him into an out-and-out bad one, in just a few 
498 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


months, — in the time that it takes an ear of corn to 
form and ripen and go off with the mildew? Or is n’t 
there any God at all, — but only men who live and 
die like animals? And that would explain my 
case, wouldn’t it? I got bitten and went vicious 
and crazy, and they ’ve had to chase me out and 
hunt me to my death like a mad dog ! Yes, that 
makes it all very simple. It is n’t worth while to 
discuss me at all as if I had a soul, is it ? I ’m 
just one more mongrel cur that ’s gone mad, and 
must be put out of the way. That ’s all.” 

“ See here,” said Sister Soulsby, alertly, “ I half 
believe that a good cuffing is what you really stand 
in need of. Now you stop all this nonsense, and 
lie quiet and keep still ! Do you hear me?” 

The jocose sternness which she assumed, in 
words and manner, seemed to soothe him. He 
almost smiled up at her in a melancholy way, and 
sighed profoundly. 

“ I ’ve told you my religion before,” she went on 
with gentleness. “ The sheep and the goats are 
to be separated on Judgment Day, but not a min- 
ute sooner. In other words, as long as human life 
lasts, good, bad, and indifferent are all braided up 
together in every man’s nature, and every woman’s 
too. You were n’t altogether good a year ago, any 
more than you ’re altogether bad now. You were 
some of both then ; you ’re some of both now. If 
you ’ve been making an extra sort of fool of your- 
self lately, why, now that you recognize it, the only 
499 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


thing to do is to slow steam, pull up, and back 
engine in the other direction. In that way you ’ll 
find things will even themselves up. It ’s a see- 
saw with all of us, Theron Ware, — sometimes up ; 
sometimes down. But nobody is rotten clear to 
the core.” 

He closed his eyes, and lay in silence for a time. 

“ This is what day of the week? ” he asked, at 
last. 

“ Friday, the nineteenth.” 

“ Wednesday, — that would be the seventeenth. 
That was the day ordained for my slaughter. On 
that morning, I was the happiest man in the world. 
No king could have been so proud and confident 
as I was. A wonderful romance had come to me. 
The most beautiful young woman in the world, the 
most talented too, was waiting for me. An ex- 
press train was carrying me to her, and it could n’t 
go fast enough to keep up with my eagerness. 
She was very rich, and she loved me, and we were 
to live in eternal summer, wherever we liked, on a 
big, beautiful yacht. No one else had such a life 
before him as that. It seemed almost too good 
for me, but I thought I had grown and developed 
so much that perhaps I would be worthy of it. 
Oh, how happy I was ! I tell you this because — be- 
cause you are not like the others. You will under- 
stand.” 

“ Yes, I understand,” she said patiently. “ Well 

you were being so happy.” 

500 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


“ That was in the morning, — Wednesday the 
seventeenth, — early in the morning. There was a 
little girl in the car, playing with some buttons, 
and when I tried to make friends with her, she 
looked at me, and she saw, right at a glance, that 
I was a fool. ‘ Out of the mouths of babes and 
sucklings,’ you know. She was the first to find it 
out. It began like that, early in the morning. 
But then after that everybody knew it. They had 
only to look at me and they said : * Why, this is a 
fool, — like a little nasty boy ; we won’t let him 
into our houses; we find him a bore.’ That is 
what they said.” 

“ Did she say it ? ” Sister Soulsby permitted her- 
self to ask. 

For answer Theron bit his lips, and drew his 
chin under the fur, and pushed his scowling face 
into the pillow. The spasmodic, sob-like gasps 
began to shake him again. She laid a compas- 
sionate hand upon his hot brow. 

“ That is why I made my way here to you,” he 
groaned piteously. “ I knew you would sympa- 
thize ; 1 could tell it all to you. And it was so 
awful, to die there alone in the strange city — I 
could n’t do it — with nobody near me who liked 
me, or thought well of me. Alice would hate me. 
There was no one but you. I wanted to be with 
you — at the last.” 

His quavering voice broke off in a gust of weep- 
ing, and his face frankly surrendered itself to tne 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


distortions of a crying child’s countenance, wide, 
mouthed and tragically grotesque in its abandon- 
ment of control. 

Sister Soulsby, as her husband’s boots were 
heard descending the stairs, rose, and drew the 
robe up to half cover his agonized visage. She 
patted the sufferer softly on the head, and then 
went to the stair- door. 

“ I think he ’ll go to sleep now,” she said, lifting 
her voice to the new-comer, and with a backward 
nod toward the couch. “Come out into the 
kitchen while I get breakfast, or into the sitting- 
room, or somewhere, so as not to disturb him. 
He ’s promised me to lie perfectly quiet, and try 
to sleep.” 

When they had passed together out of the room, 
she turned. “ Soulsby,” she said with half-playful 
asperity, “ I ’m disappointed in you. For a man 
who ’s knocked about as much as you have, I must 
say you ’ve picked up an astonishingly small outfit 
of gumption. That poor creature in there is no 
more drunk than I am. He *s been drinking, — 
yes, drinking like a fish ; but it was n’t able to make 
him drunk. He ’s past being drunk ; he ’s grief- 
crazy. It *s a case of * woman.* Some girl has 
made a fool of him, and decoyed him up in a bal- 
loon, and let him drop. Tie ’s been hurt bad, too.” 

“ We have all been hurt in our day and genera- 
tion,” responded Brother Soulsby, genially. “ Don’t 
you worry ; he ’ll sleep that off, too. It takes 

5C3 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


longer than drink, and it does n’t begin to be so 
pleasant, but it can be slept off. Take my word 
for it, he ’ll be a different man by noon.” 

When noon came, however, Brother Soulsby was 
on his way to summon one of the village doctors. 
Toward nightfall, he went out again to telegraph 
for Alice. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


Spring fell early upon the pleasant southern 
slopes of the Susquehanna country. The snow 
went off as by magic. The trees budded and 
leaved before their time. The birds came and 
set up their chorus in the elms, while winter 
seemed still a thing of yesterday. 

Alice, clad gravely in black, stood again upon a 
kitchen-stoop, and looked across an intervening 
space of back-yards and fences to where the tall 
boughs, fresh in their new verdure, were silhou- 
etted against the pure blue sky. The prospect 
recalled to her irresistibly another sunlit morning, 
a year ago, when she had stood in the doorway of 
her own kitchen, and surveyed a scene not unlike 
this ; it might have been with the same carolling 
robins, the same trees, the same azure segment of 
the tranquil, speckless dome. Then she was look- 
ing out upon surroundings novel and strange to 
her, among which she must make herself at home 
as best she could. But at least the ground was 
secure under her feet ; at least she had a home, 
and a word from her lips could summon her 
husband out, to stand beside her with his arm 
504 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 

about her, and share her buoyant, hopeful joy in 
the promises of spring. 

To think that that was only one little year ago, 
— the mere revolution of four brief seasons ! And 
now ! 

Sister Soulsby, wiping her hands on her apron, 
came briskly out upon the stoop. Some cheerful 
commonplace was on her tongue, but a glance at 
Alice’s wistful face kept it back. She passed an 
arm around her waist instead, and stood in silence, 
looking at the elms. 

“It brings back memories to me, — all this,” 
said Alice, nodding her head, and not seeking to 
dissemble the tears which sprang to her eyes. 

“ The men will be down in a minute, dear,” the 
other reminded her. “ They ’d nearly finished 
packing before I put the biscuits in the oven. We 
must n’t wear long faces before folks, you know.” 

“Yes, I know,” murmured Alice. Then, with a 
sudden impulse, she turned to her companion. 
“ Candace,” she said fervently, “ we ’re alone here 
for the moment ; I must tell you that if I don’t 
talk gratitude to you, it ’s simply and solely because 
I don’t know where to begin, or what to say. I’ m 
just dumfounded at your goodness. It takes my 
speech away. I only know this, Candace : God 
will be very good to you.” 

“ Tut ! tut ! ” replied Sister Soulsby, “ that ’s all 
right, you dear thing. I know just how you feel. 
Don’t dream of being under obligation to explain 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


it to me, or to thank us at all. We’ve had all 
sorts of comfort out of the thing, — Soulsby and I. 
We used to get downright lonesome, here all by 
ourselves, and we ’ve simply had a winter of pleas- 
ant company instead, that ’s all. Besides, there ’s 
solid satisfaction in knowing that at last, for once 
in our lives, we ’ve had a chance to be of some 
real use to somebody who truly needed it. You 
can’t imagine how stuck up that makes us in our 
own conceit. We feel as if we were George Pea- 
body and Lady Burdett-Coutts, and several other 
philanthropists thrown in. No, seriously, don’t 
think of it again. We ’re glad to have been able 
to do it all; and if you only go ahead now, and 
prosper and be happy, why, that will be the only 
reward we want.” 

“ I hope we shall do well,” said Alice. “ Only 
tell me this, Candace. You do think I was right, 
don’t you, in insisting on Theron’s leaving the minis- 
try altogether? He seems convinced enough now 
that it was the right thing to do; but I grow 
nervous sometimes lest he should find it harder 
than he thought to get along in business, and regret 
the change — and blame me.” 

“ I think you may rest easy in your mind about 
that,” the other responded. “ Whatever else he 
does, he will never want to come within gunshot 
of a pulpit again. It came too near murdering him 
for that.” 

Alice looked at her doubtfully. “ Something 

5°6 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


came near murdering him, I know. But it does n’t 
seem to me that I would say it was the ministry. 
And I guess you know pretty well yourself what it 
was. Of course, I ’ve never asked any questions, 
and I ’ve hushed up everybody at Octavius who 
tried to quiz me about it, — his disappearance and 
my packing up and leaving, and all that — and I ’ve 
never discussed the question with you — but — ” 

“ No, and there ’s no good going into it now,” 
put in Sister Soulsby, with amiable decisiveness. 
“ It ’s all past and gone. In fact, I hardly remem- 
ber much about it now myself. He simply got into 
deep water, poor soul, and we ’ve floated him out 
again, safe and sound. That ’s all. But all the 
same, I was right in what I said. He was a mis- 
take in the ministry.” 

“ But if you ’d known him in previous years,” 
urged Alice, plaintively, “ before we were sent to 
that awful Octavius. He was the very ideal of all 
a young minister should be. People used to simply 
worship him, he was such a perfect preacher, and 
so pure-minded and friendly with everybody, and 
threw himself into his work so. It was all that 
miserable, contemptible Octavius that did the 
mischief.” 

Sister Soulsby slowly shook her head. “ If there 
hadn’t been a screw loose somewhere,” she said 
gently, “ Octavius would n’t have hurt him. No, 
take my word for it, he never was the right man for 
the place. He seemed to be, no doubt, but he 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


was n’t. When pressure was put on him, it found out 
his weak spot like a shot, and pushed on it, and — 
well, it came near smashing him, that ’s all.” 

“ And do you think he ’ll always be a — a back- 
slider,” mourned Alice. 

“ For mercy’s sake, don’t ever try to have him 
pretend to be anything else ! ” exclaimed the other. 
“ The last state of that man would be worse than 
the first. You must make up your mind to that. 
And you must n’t show that you ’re nervous about 
it. You must n’t get nervous ! You must n’t be 
afraid of things. Just you keep a stiff upper lip, 
and say you will get along, you will be happy. 
That ’s your only chance, Alice. He is n’t going 
to be an angel of light, or a saint, or anything of 
that sort, and it ’s no good expecting it. But he ’ll 
be just an average kind of man, — a little sore about 
some things, a little wiser than he was about some 
others. You can get along perfectly with him, if 
you only keep your courage up, and don’t show 
the white feather.” 

“ Yes, I know ; but I ’ve had it pretty well taken 
out of me,” commented Alice. “ It used to come 
easy to me to be cheerful and resolute and all that ; 
but it ’s different now.” 

Sister Soulsby stole a swift glance at the unsus- 
pecting face of her companion which was not all 
admiration, but her voice remained patiently affec- 
tionate. “ Oh, that ’ll all come back to you, right 
enough. You ’ll have your hands full, you know, 
508 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


finding a house, and unpacking all your old furni- 
ture, and buying new things, and getting your home 
settled. It ’ll keep you so busy you won’t have 
time to feel strange or lonesome, one bit. You ’ll 
see how it ’ll tone you up. In a year’s time you 
won’t know yourself in the looking-glass.” 

“ Oh, my health is good enough,” said Alice ; 
“ but I can’t help thinking, suppose Theron should 
be taken sick again, away out there among strangers. 
You know he ’s never appeared to me to have quite 
got his strength back. These long illnesses, you 
know, they always leave a mark on a man.” 

“ Nonsense ! He *s strong as an ox,” insisted 
Sister Soulsby. “ You mark my word, he ’ll thrive 
in Seattle like a green bay-tree.” 

“ Seattle ! ” echoed Alice, meditatively. “ It 
sounds like the other end of the world, does n’t it ? ” 
The noise of feet in the house broke upon the 
colloquy, and the women went indoors, to join the 
breakfast party. During the meal, it was Brother 
Soulsby who bore the burden of the conversation. 
He was full of the future of Seattle and the mag- 
nificent impending development of that Pacific 
section. He had been out there, years ago, when 
it was next door to uninhabited. He had visited 
the district twice since, and the changes discover- 
able each new time were more wonderful than any- 
thing Aladdin’s lamp ever wrought. He had secured 
for Theron, through some of his friends in Port- 
land, the superintendency of a land and real estate 
5°9 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


company, which had its headquarters in Seattle, 
but ambitiously linked its affairs with the future of 
all Washington Territory. In an hour’s time the 
hack would come to take the Wares and their bag- 
gage to the depot, the first stage in their long 
journey across the continent to their new home. 
Brother Soulsby amiably filled the interval with 
reminiscences of the Oregon of twenty years back, 
with instructive dissertations upon the soil, climate, 
and seasons of Puget Sound and the Columbia 
valley, and, above all, with helpful characterizations 
of the social life which had begun to take form in 
this remotest West. He had nothing but confi- 
dence, to all appearances, in the success of his 
young friend, now embarking on this new career. 
He seemed so sanguine about it that the whole 
atmosphere of the breakfast room lightened up, 
and the parting meal, surrounded by so many 
temptations to distraught broodings and silences as 
it was, became almost jovial in its spirit. 

At last, it was time to look for the carriage. 
The trunks and hand-bags were ready in the hall, 
and Sister Soulsby was tying up a package of sand- 
wiches for Alice to keep by her in the train. 

Theron, with hat in hand, and overcoat on arm, 
loitered restlessly into the kitchen, and watched 
this proceeding for a moment. Then he sauntered 
out upon the stoop, and, lifting his head and draw- 
ing as long a breath as he could, looked over at 
the elms. 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


Perhaps the face was older and graver ; it was 
,rd to tell. The long winter’s illness, with its 
curring crises and sustained confinement, had 
eached his skin and reduced his figure to gaunt- 
:ss, but there was none the less an air of restored 
id secure good health about him. Only in the 
r es themselves, as they rested briefly upon the 
' ‘ospect, did a substantial change suggest itself, 
hey did not dwell fondly upon the picture of the 
fty, spreading boughs, with their waves of sap- 
*een leafage stirring against the blue. They did 
Dt soften and glow this time, at the thought of 
ow wholly one felt sure of God’s goodness in 
lese wonderful new mornings of spring. 

They looked instead straight through the fairest 
nd most moving spectacle in nature’s proces- 
'onal, and saw afar off, in conjectural vision, a 
irmless sort of place which was Seattle. They 
urveyed its impalpable outlines, its undefined 
.imensions, with a certain cool glitter of hard-and- 
ist resolve. There rose before his fancy, out of 
he chaos of these shapeless imaginings, some 
aces of men, then more behind them, then a great 
:oncourse of uplifted countenances, crowded close 
ogether as far as the eye could reach. They were 
ittentive faces all, rapt, eager, credulous to a de- 
cree. Their eyes were admiringly bent upon a 
:ommon object of excited interest. They were 
ooking at him; they strained their ears to miss 
.10 cadence of his voice. Involuntarily he straight- 
5 11 


THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE 


ened himself, stretched forth his hand with the 
pale, thin fingers gracefully disposed, and passed 
it slowly before him from side to side, in a com 
prehensive, stately gesture. The audience rose < 
him, as he dropped his hand, and filled his day- 
dream with a mighty roar of applause, in volume 
like an ocean tempest, yet pitched for his hearing 
alone. 

He smiled, shook himself with a little delighted 
tremor, and turned on the stoop to the open door. 

“ What Soulsby said about politics out there 
interested me enormously,” he remarked to the 
two women. “ I should n’t be surprised if I found 
myself doing something in that line. I can speak, 
you know, if I can’t do anything else. Talk is 
what tells, these days. Who knows? I may turn 
up in Washington a full-blown senator before I ’m 
forty. Stranger things have happened than that, 
out West ! ” 

“ We ’ll come down and visit you then, Soulsby 
and I,” said Sister Soulsby, cheerfully. “You 
shall take us to the White House, Alice, and in- 
troduce us.” 

“ Oh, it isn’t likely /would come East,” said 
Alice, pensively. “ Most probably I ’d be left to 
amuse myself in Seattle. But there — I think 
that’s the carriage driving up to the door.” 

THE END. 

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